Reality Check Time! Oleksandr Usyk is Still The P4P Number One Fighter On The Planet. This Is Why...

Of course, what else is there for him to do at SMW, he took all the belts against the only real big name in the division. Who's he going to stick around at SMW for, Sheeraz? I expect that he will retire actually, Janibek will be considered as too high risk low reward I think.

 

lol, at weight doesn't matter at HW.

Then why does every modern HW champion weigh a **** ton then? Clearly you need to weigh a lot of pounds in order to win a HW title.

 

Yeah, I wonder how that one would have looked had Canelo gone life and death with an MMA fighter in his previous fight.

Both Spence and Canelo had looked better in their previous fights than AJ and Fury had.

I can see the argument for Usyk, though, as I do for Inoue, but what Crawford did is such a rare achievement that I lean toward him as p4P nr 1 right now. Much prefer Usyk and Inoue, though.

 

It’s weird isn’t it. Inoue gets the short end of the stick, because there’s not a lot of love for the lower weight classes. It’s just how it is.

Had he come round 10 years before though the lower weight classes were stacked when he we would have been coming up in this hypothetical scenario. Imagine a near prime Donaire and Rigondeaux. Those are some dreamy match ups.

Even lower weights Roman Gonzalez, Viloria, Estrada. Maybe It’s because I’m not as invested now, but god damn, now I’m thinking Agbeko, Mares, Ponce, moreno.

I might even have got my weights wrong here with hypothetical match ups, I’m mainly writing this off vibes, so there’s every possibility this makes no sense, but god dang that’d be special

 

HW champions in the last 30 years
Usyk(Lineal Champ)- 6'3 220 pounds
Daniel Dubious(IBF Champ)- 6'5 250 pounds(lost to the smaller man twice)
Tyson Fury(Lineal Champ)- 6'9 270 pounds(lost to the smaller man twice, questionable performances against other smaller men)
Anthony Joshua(unifed champ)- 6'6 250 pounds(all of his losses came against smaller men. You can argue Ruiz being 263 pounds at 6'1, but that was more of a detriment that a positive.)
Andy Ruiz(unified champ)- 6'1 255 pounds
Deontay Wilder(WBC Champ)- 6'7, 220 pounds, going as low as 210 in some defenses
Bermane Stiverne(WBC Champ)- 6'2 240 pounds, loss to the skinner man in Wilder
Wladimir Klitschko(Lineal Champ)- 6'6 243 pounds(KO's by 6'2 230 pound Lamon Brewster, 6'4 225 pound Corrie Saunders, 6'3 245 Ross Purrity, all smaller men)
David Haye(WBA Champ)- 6'3 220 pounds
Vitali Klitschko(WBC Champ)- 6'7 240 pounds(lost to 6'2 210 pounds Chris Byrd)
Ruslan Chagaev(WBA Champ)- 6'1 230 pounds
Nikolai Valuev(WBA Champ)- 7'0 320 pounds(all of his losses came to the smaller man)
John Ruiz(WBA Champ)- 6'2 230(no explanation needed)
Roy Jones Jr(WBA Champ- 5'11 198 pounds
Chris Byrd(IBF Champ)- 6'2 210 pounds
Lennox Lewis(Lineal Champion) 6'5, 245 pounds(lost to 6'2 225 pound Oliver McCall)
Evander Holyfield(Lineal Champion)- 6'2 217 pounds
Michael Moorer(Lineal Champion)- 6'2 220 pounds
Riddick Bowe(Lineal Champion)- 6'5 235(lost to the much smaller Holyfield)
Mike Tyson(Lineal Champion)- 5'11 215 pounds

 

So every HW belt holder of the last 30 years (with the exception of Roy Jones) is above 210 pounds. And you're telling me that weight doesn't matter at HW?

 

Also I really don’t see an argument for Crawford, that Canelo win, although a massive achievement and great for his legacy, It’s kind of B+ at best. Canelo was awful. I said to my irl homies that if it was at middleweight it would have been Pac-ODLH 2.0 because no way Canelo makes middleweight and he’d be destroyed because he’d be so weight drained and Canelo’s performance only confirmed that.

 

Yeah, Inoue lacks the big names to make a really legendary. Nakatani, yes, but he is one weight class lower. Bam two. There's nothing exciting at 126 so he probably has to clean out 130 also if he has time for that. But those guys are going to be substantially bigger. Even MJ looked quite a bit bigger. Larger difference than Between Bud and Canelo to my eyes.

 

This is something I ALWAYS used to bring up.

The rose tinted glasses of the 70s /60s heavyweights is ‘look how good they are on film…’ like yeah no ****, compare their aesthetic on film to Cruiserweight these days. (By the way they look pretty damn good) 260lbers look horrible compared to 210lbers (let’s go 200 back when that was the limit a wee while ago, because they’d still be weighing 215 on fight night) it’s not comparable in the slightest

There is a reason why Uysk is the first since Holyfield to be successful coming up from Cruiserweight and weight definitely matters

although quick side note. Although Fury definitely won the first Wilder fight by a few rounds, wilder was only 209 I believe