“You either retire as an GOAT, or you fight long enough to end up as a greedy belly”

If Usyk does fight Kabayel I think we may well see it !

 

Thank you for mentioning Hopkins who is one of my favorite fighters. Interesting that as a middleweight Hopkins was big and beat some notable smaller men like Trinidad and DLH. Wish he would have retired after his next to last fight against Kovalev. I saw that live and he really took a sustained beating in that fight.

 

Hopkins was legitimately a master ring general with extremely high boxing iq. Quite rare to see as a heavyweight. The problem on this forum is people overrated Usyk's ring generalship and boxing iq when a lot of his success actually comes from having fast feet and high output relative to the weight class (especially effective against lumbering modern heavies). We see now that once he starts slowing down the cracks start showing on a technical and tactical level. My personal opinion after tonight is that Usyk is/has actually been a more speed/physicality fighter with decent fundamentals, not a top class ring general stylistically.

To negate this as he ages further he'd either have to be very physical like Foreman or have Holmes level ring iq. Personally I don't think he has either.

 

Great post. I would only disagree about the level of Usyk's ring generalship - I think it is higher than you rate it, but this is only splitting hairs. Hopkins was a once in lifetime fighter!

 

Whatever. If social media had been around when Muhammad Ali was boxing, you'd all have been calling him a scrub and an embarrassment to the sport for losing to Spinks, needing robberies to get decisions over Norton, etc.

A 39 year old guy has a bad night against a roided out giant and you're all using it as an indictment on the entire division. I heard the same nonsense after the Fury/Ngannou fight and then AJ slept Ngannou like it was a walk in the park.

 

Rico had one job to do; not get dropped late in the fight and spit his mouthpiece out by a smaller, light-punching, bloated, aged champion with one foot in retirement with radically diminished reflexes.
As for Holyfield, he had taken more drugs than Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dorian Yates, Lance Armstrong, Barry Bonds, Elvis Presley, and Hunter S Thompson combined, could no longer put two words together in a sentence, had been clowned by Chris Byrd, Larry Donald, and former middleweight James Toney (who stuck his tongue out at Evan while taxing his azz). Not to mention Mr Fields had visited a witch doctor who used booga booga magick to heal a hole in his heart, and claimed he was hit so hard by a 73 year old barbecue salesman that he said it felt like all of his teef were knocked out! On top of all of this, the good Mr Fields was universally regarded as such a dirty fighter that 3rd world sewer systems were declared to be more sanitary than a boxing ring that Holyfield had entered.

 

Rico is definitely a better technical boxer and striker than Ngannou. I bet Tyson Fury, who sparred one and fought the other, would say the same.

 

Ok darlin’, it’s obvious that you logged into your babysitter’s iPad while she’s out smoking on the patio. You need to log off and get back to bed before she catches you.

 

Put Marciano against Fury, Joshua or Dubois and we'll see what an "actual warrior" he is.

Imagine hating on a fighter just because he makes your past greats look like bums and shatters the myth that boxing was so much better back in the day. So you exaggerate every negative and cling to any bad performance just to diminish his greatness. Actually pathetic.