If we're titling the thread "let's be real" then let's call a spade a spade. He's beaten one fringe contender. + Nobody else stopped Zhang. + It was convincing. - Zhang is literally 50/50 against top 200 opponents (mostly because he's near completely incapable of winning on cards, so almost anyone who can survive can beat him). - Zhang was 41. He's beaten one good gatekeeper and one okay gatekeeper. + Chisora is broadly seen as THE gatekeeper, it's a good win, enough to establish contender status. ~ Sanchez is hopelessly overhyped, but decent enough. He's beaten one international level journeyman. ~ Makh was, again, hopelessly overrated for a while. The rest of his career is domestic level cans. - Twice he's hit a career high and then targeted crap fights - after Chisora with Rovcanin and then after Zhang aiming at Hysa before fighting Knyba instead... This is a pattern of cowardice. - This doesn't serve as "depth" in any meaningful sense when it's so far off the level of his top wins Kabayel looks like he could be a difficult opponent who'd trouble most... But for how much hype he gets, you'd expect to see quite a bit more evidence than we actually do - he's proven he can handle a few things at mediocre level but that doesn't mean much when it comes to beating contenders, and when most aren't glacial and over 40, there's still an awful lot to prove. And having a lot to prove is a status that doesn't change if you're the kind of fighter that doesn't take many big challenges.
Who are you arguing against? Did I ever say Kabayel was in the same league as Usyk in terms of resume or ability, or that he'd beat prime heavyweight Usyk? No. In fact, I've already said I think prime Usyk beats Kabayel. Usyk could have gone out like a "king" after Fury II or Dubois II. Outside of a few haters, nobody would deny what he accomplished at heavyweight. However, when you spend a year waiting to fight a guy who hadn't earned a title shot at all instead of facing the consensus No. 1 contender in Kabayel, that's textbook ducking. Then, as soon as the WBC finally enforced its mandatory, Usyk ran away. And it's not like Usyk is retiring either. He's going to fight Wilder in Zuffa, which shows he still has an interest in boxing; just not in boxing Kabayel. Usyk ducked him, plain and simple. No mental gymnastics required.
Not really... Remember, the rose-tinted glaze comes off the moment a fighter loses that zero - Kabayel's reputation is a bit of a balloon, if you burst that zero, what's left is an ancient Chinaman who's inconsistent against anyone decent... Then a couple of gatekeepers. Sure, it's not nothing, but it wouldn't really stack up in a legacy sense as relevant alongside Joshua and Fury, or even Dubois. The other relevant factor is what he might still go on to do if he'd lost that fight - going by his record to date, the odds of him significantly improving that legacy value (ie: the win aging well) are on the slim side. Frankly, Kabayel wouldn't have made much difference to Usyks legacy in the fullness of time.
I don't think those guys are any more HOF worthy realistically than many Tyson victims. If Joshua and company are deemed HOF worthy than guys like Tucker, Thomas and Berbick have a good case
Tbh the only matchup I was really interested in pre-Rico was Usyk-Wardley, due to their vastly different styles. And yeah, Kabayel has been wasting his career avoiding the top guys. Just the fact that he fought Knyba nearly 1 year after Zhang is proof of that. Hrgovic and others have been calling him out, but he's clearly not interested. I think Turki got mad when Kabayel rejected Istanbul as a potential venue too.
Kabayel destroyed Zhang in under six rounds; something no other top heavyweight has done. I thought Zhang beat Parker and even if you scored it for Parker, it was only by a point or two. The Hrgovic fight was also a greatly controversial decision. Sanchez was undefeated and packed one hell of a punch, but Kabayel dismantled him with ease. Makhmudov is a tough gatekeeper, and Kabayel stopped an undefeated fighter who had a lot of hype/momentum in under four rounds. Fury took the full 12 rounds to beat him, while Vianello only got him out of there because of a cut in the eighth. He also beat Chisora convincingly, and Chisora has given plenty of top heavyweights serious problems. People also forget that beating Chisora didn't make Kabayel a star. He had to defend the EBU title multiple times before getting the Makhmudov fight. As for the Knyba fight, most mandatory challengers take stay-busy fights like that. Now, I do think his inactivity and Knyba fight is a fair criticism. But I'm willing to give Kabayel a chance as champion before I start calling him overrated.
Absolutely. And I've been saying this for ages - if Kabayel had really wanted Usyk, he could've gone out there and raised his legacy value by beating someone good... A gatekeeper like Hrgovic would've been okay, a contender would've been better (and with a mandatory as a bargaining chip, he could probably have found one). But he went domestic level instead and proved the opposite - that he couldn't be trusted to aim higher and improve his resume and legacy value... He has no reason to complain.
Who had Rico beaten to deserve the Usyk fight, genius? Kabayel had been calling out Usyk for nearly a year. Don't play armchair psychologist and suggest he didn't really want the fight because he didn't fight X, Y, or Z. He has the best run at heavyweight right now besides Usyk, and he's still undefeated.
Kabayel did well against Zhang and it was convincing. Parker clearly beat Zhang. Hrgovic is crap on cards - the fact it was close illustrates how good Zhang isn't on the cards. Undefeated is shiny until it's gone - it doesn't really make a win any more special when it's a fighter who hasn't done all that much, especially if there's a good chance they weren't 100%. Add in that Sanchez best win is journeyman Ajagba and he's not really anything special - mediocre gatekeeper is generous, and I don't have to be harsh here to make my point. Makh isn't a gatekeeper, he's a journeyman - Fury looked like crap and had little trouble. He's been hyped very hard, but he's nothing special at all. If he had a deep resume and didn't have a history of running away to fight crap, I'd give him that pass for Knyba (at least to some extent), if he was chasing top fights seriously afterwards... But he has history, and he's targeting very mediocre opponents like Miller. He needs to prove he deserves to be a champion. I didn't give Wilder a pass for taking the **** with the WBC belt and I'm not going to do it for Kabayel (or anyone else) - he needs to start making fights a champion should be making, ESPECIALLY if he's going to fight once a year.
I disagree, and no doubt so does the HoF. Even Buster Douglas was not deemed HoF worthy. Tyson's objective record against HoF was 2-3.
Rico was a crap fight. But Kabayel didn't make himself impossible to ignore - he wasn't relevant to claims of having cleaned the top guys out, his resume isn't close... And he did nothing to improve it after Zhang when he could have. It's that simple - he chose to stay irrelevant and called for a fight he knew he wasn't likely to get - let's not pretend we haven't seen this a hundred times before.
At 39, Holyfield had far more wear and tear than. 39 year old Usyk. He had fought more often and against better fighters. being in the hof is a low bar. I already explained how a guy like Fury, who spent years avoiding high quality opponents while also struggling with the likes of Nnganou and Wallin, isn’t some otherworldly win.