Max Kellerman says Usyk is a historically overrated heavyweight, do you agree?

Thanks

 

Thanks

 

I keep seeing people parroting the ''Usyk's only fought 5 guys at HW'' discrediting argument

He's had 8 fights at HW but he's only fought and defended vs the top 1-2 guys throughout his reign sans Dubois 1 who was his mandatory

And he had to rematch 2 of them and agree to give them 2 attempts at beating him when neither deserved a rematch in the first place.

Yes he earned very well out of those rematches but the deck was already stacked against him given the huge size advantages he was giving away to them and he had to overcome that again and a change in tactics by them, and when you're fighting opponents that much bigger, heavier, longer and more powerful than you your margin for error is a lot less

Crawford never gave Madrimov a rematch even though Madrimov was the champ and Crawford the challenger and he brought his belt to Crawford's backyard and fought him on a deck which was heavily stacked against him in the US with a US ref and 2 US judges, 1 neutral.

That fight was genuinely close and controversial and Madrimov is one of the tiny few legit bangers Crawford has fought his size, not way bigger like Belly and AJ are than Usyk.

If Madrimov was given a rematch does it increase his chances of beating him or not? Of course it does. It massively increases it because he would get 2 attempts at doing so, so people citing Usyk having to rematch those guys to try and discredit him is ridiculous because he's the one who was put at a disadvantage there with everything to lose vs much bigger natural HWs who held every conceivable physical advantage over him

And he agreed to rematch the much bigger, younger and more powerful Dubois in his backyard to silence the doubters and put and end to the controversy regarding the first fight and win back the belt which had been stripped from him. Dubois is a murderous puncher with a KO 95% and not only did he hold the only other belt but, and many are trying to pretend like this didn't happen now, he was coming off 3 very impressive KO/stoppage wins, one over former champ AJ and 2 over arguably the most iron-jawed fighters in the division, both of whom were undefeated.

Beating AJ, Hrgovic and Miller would be an impressive 3 fight run but knocking out or stopping them all much more so.

And the people citing the he's only fought 5 guys argument are conveniently neglecting to mention that he fought all of them at least once in their backyards, they are all way bigger than him, 3 were younger or much younger than him, and all were younger than he is now. The oldest world class opponent Usyk's ever fought was 36

And Usyk as I keep saying he's currently the oldest HW undisputed champion ever, the 2nd oldest unified HW champ, and soon to be the 4th oldest HW champ ever and the 3 above him were all 240-250lb giants with extremely high KO% (82%, 89%, 91%) and they were all fighting many soft or softer touches in between facing the top guys not the 1-2 ranked guys B2B

And again, if we are directly comparing Usyk to the greats of previous eras who were CW sized generally beating up on CW, LHW and even some SMW sized HWs why should we ignore the fact everyone Usyk has fought as a pro would be a HW in those eras and the CWs he's fought are bigger than many of the HWs they fought in those eras, and all the HWs he's fought were way bigger than the vast majority of HWs they fought even the bigger ones?

 

Exactly right