How great is the CW division that we should anoint Usyk for 'cleaning it out'?

Haye never used the cruiserweight as a stepping stone and the division was very weak at the time.

 

Except that Briedis fight wasn’t a shutout, totally agree.

 

No, Gassiev was a shutout. Hunter is better than Gassiev, but Usyk dominated Gassiev. Breidis is the best win.

 

I was at that fight too! You are 100% correct. I couldn't believe how biased the crowd was toward a home town son. I remember, going into the 6th round, some old man turn back to me and said "this is when Tony starts to pick it up". LOL shortly after that Margo was pummled into submission.

 

Still climbing? I thought starting a thread “nobody said x-y-z, before x-y-z” that then proceeds to get 10 pages worth of posts with not a single comment that supports the OP claim amongst them sorta shoots you right through the P4P (post for post) rankings. I’m talking TOP5 here.
Then the follow-up thread to one already mentioned proved his determination to break TOP3 and this one just seals the deal in my book.

 

easy nights work for Usyk.

 

he was never undisputed either.

 

lol @ thinking fighting some fat one hit wonder in staples center is a greater feat than beating the russian champ who's number 1 in the division, in moscow, while ur 2 countries are at war
sums up the usyk hate, american centrism and the typical denigrating of a division because they have hardly any top guys in it

 

There's in no one Usyk defeated at cruiser that suggest he will dominate the heavyweight division.

Gassiev showed no heart & was nothing more than a punching bag and Briedis gave him more than he could handle in a closely contested affair.

 

I don't know how "good" it is, but it is at least interesting. Hunter, Huck and Breidis have all competed credibly at heavy. Glowacki had a win against Huck, and Gassiev was highly respected and touted above all those others.

I think it was a fine accomplishment.

On to heavy. My guess is that Usky will excel there as well, and in two years OP will be making a "how good was the heavyweight division anyway" thread.

 

The HW division right now is terrible. My hope is that guys like Usyk waiting in the wings bring some life back to it.

 

It’s about going up and going to where the challenges are or expanding your competition so you can find more challenges.

Unless your division is seriously stacked, I can’t rate a guy who only fights in 1 division that highly. It’s just a matter of maths.

If LW has 2000 competitors, JWW 1500, WW 2000, JMW 1500, MW 2000 - then by beating the champ in each division, you’ve basically declared yourself one of the best in 5 competitions, coming on top of a talent pool of 9000 talents.

Meanwhile if you stay in 1 weight class that has 1500 competitors, even if you clean that out, you got the gold medal out of 1500 competitors.

I’d argue that competing against a much larger talent pool is generally much more competitive. Unless the anomaly happens and that 1500 contains much more elite fights but the chance of that happening is 6/1 odds.