Gassiev being elevated to WBA champ would be a travesty. The dude has done NOTHING do deserve this ranking. He lost to Wallin. He isn't highly active. He hasn't beaten any remotely prime fighters. Lol.
Who cares. I hope he dances quickly out of our Undisputed lives and be done with it. I’ll not say Lineal as he has a true claim to it but all these Unification, Undisputed, Unified & Lineal claims are starting to get boring. He’s got the riches so now dance off into the sunset with your Unified, Undisputed self and let’s all hope boxings even got an even chance of a future.
And quite frankly the decision could have been the other way around. And Kabayel didn’t follow up with a proper fight for 5 years. And after beating chain smoking grandpa Zhang he went back to fighting no names. As for Usyk, I don’t think it will be only 1 more fight. Would love to see: wilder, Fury, Rico, Benavidez, Beterbiev, Bivol. Think Beterbiev vs Usyk would be a legendary 12 rounds
I don't consider schooling 2017 Chisora a pedestrian performance. It was the first hint he was a very good fighter.
The consensus is something like 8-4 or 9-3 Kabayal, a comfortable win with Kabayel giving Chisora the business in round 12. Very few have beaten Chisora so easily or more easily.
Again and again and again--because it was a poor fight in which neither guy did much, but Kabayel did a bit more of nothing. I mean, we can put it to a poll if you like. It is a decent win on the resume, but not the great win you are trying to make it.
Wilder. Seems interested in getting all the big name previous era guys on his dossier rather than the new/future generation guys he hasn't faced yet. He's had a long, difficult career and relinquished the titles, though, so whatever - I'm fine with him going out on his terms. He's clearly past it anyways and knows it.
Not a "great win" but Kabayel was similarly dominant to Fury 1, Vitali and Usyk. Fury 2 and Fury 3 did a better job. You'd have to say Haye, even though the stoppage was early for me. Everyone else had a harder time with Chisora: Wilder, Pulev, Whyte, Parker, Helenius, Joyce, Takam, Wallin.
It would establish at least in the minds of fans that Usyk just had an off night due to coming in out of shape and not taking his opponent seriously enough, it would draw a line under the situation and most people would move on. On the other hand if he doesn't rematch Rico it gets talked about forever.