Since The Mighty Usyk Has Turned Heavyweight

Why not Beterbiev?

 

You simply aren't getting it. In his last fight with Bivol, Beterbiev threw 121 punches TOTAL. In his first fight with Bivol, Beterbiev threw 137 punches. Marciano, in his second fight with Charles, did 94 IN A ROUND.

Not Beterbiev, because Marciano is several orders of magnitude better, and its not debatable.

POST SCRIPT: I may have got this wrong, but see post 22. I'm still right on principle.

 

several of those 70-80s guys would put the beats on usyk.

 

Comp box has Beterbiev throwing 682 punches in fight 1. That's at age 39 coming off surgery

 

You could be right but its still not that next-level, mind blowing workrate that Marciano had. I just saw someone else's count in that Charles fight who has it at 96 punches in the 15th, with similar rounds, such as the sixth in which he threw 89.

682 against Bivol...how about Marciano throwing 691 in nine rounds against Moore? Extrapolate that out for comparison, and Marciano does about a quarter more over 12, with three extra rounds to boot.

How about 116 punches in round 8 of the Cockell fight?

Just next level.

 

They were proof he could compete at HW. He was barely a HW, beat all of them. I particularly enjoyed him using Joyce's face as a speed bag.

 

The Nistor fight was awesome. Usyk won the first to rounds clean, then Mihai caught him in the third, cut him, and won the round. The fourth was a game fight for the first tow minutes, and if Nistor would have won, he would have evened it up. But Usyk dug ddep, stole the fourth by closing well, and sealed the fight right there.

Very similar to the ninth against Fury, or the tenth against Joshua.

 

Which actually shows you how much talent he really had, if he could have controlled his diet and been serious. If he could have managed to get to 175, he'd have been a combo of the hand speed of Bivol with the power of Beterbiev. And chin? He has a granite chin at HW -- now imagine that at LHW? He'd be nigh unhurtable. He's one of the biggest "what if" fighters.

 

The sport is quite different from then to now. If we still had 15 rounds that were judged and refereed the same, a fighter like Joshua or Fury would have been leaner and smaller from the get go.

Its too hard to compare fighters from different eras as there is too many variables, do we take those fighters from their peak and bring them here, because any modern fighter has a strategic advantage growing up on their fights, plus modern nutrition and sport science? Or maybe we take from birth and raise them in the modern era with all that entails? In which case the thought experiment loses all meaning.

The fact is that being bigger gives an advantage up to a point, this is straight statistics based on how many fighters find success at each height, but that doesn't mean a supremely skilled "smaller man" can't find success.

 

No, it still holds true.
Firstly, the idea these old fighters are anywhere near Usyk is laughable.
Also, Usyk is bigger than most of the old nostalgia heroes anyway.

But some people clearly have no concept of what the argument even means. The whole point isn't that smaller fighters can't beat SHW's, it's that it is unlikely they can dominate HW like they once could.
Usyk is an EXCEPTION TO THE RULE.

SHW's have been dominating for decades now. That proves the argument pretty easily.

If you need more evidence, check out fighters like Povetkin, Haye, Chagaev, Byrd, Cunningham, Adamek and so on. These are all skilled small HW's around the size of the biggest old HW's in many cases, who simply couldn't overcome the best athletic modern SHW's, they hit a wall. The pattern just repeats over and over.

The case has been closed a long time ago. There's so much evidence it's ridiculous. And there's also no evidence Usyk would definitely beat Wlad or even prime Fury.

 

Marciano couldn't handle a modern heavy. He was a power guy in the smallest era whose power wasn't that overwhelming. That just doesn't translate. But lots of guys that size or a little bigger who were better fighters could. CW structually prevents this. Also back in the day fighters could fight in multiple weight classes. Now you really can't hop back and forth from 175 to HW anymore.

 

Again, there is no evidence that a modern heavy could handle Marciano.

At 4:40, Anthony Joshua explains it to you.

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