back when joshua won the title the skysports hype train went into overdrive i heard adam smith saying how its a golden generation of heavyweights like the 70s or 90s and i was like wtf are they on about? what do you guys think of the heavyweight division the last 5-6 years?
AJ has done well for Sky and they for him. He alongside Canelo are the face of boxing. Multimillionaires who transcend the sport.
It's not the 70s or 90s but it's certainly a competitive division with talent coming through. Its better than the 80s and the Klitschko era.
I don't think it's a great era. It's a very competitive era which makes it exciting but the fact you've got Chisora from the last era giving some of top 10 guys like Whyte and Parker very tough fights and a close to shot Povetkin KOing one of the top contenders suggests this era is no better than the last one, only you don't have the Klitschko's dominating like before. Fury is probably the stand out heavyweight in terms of ability but he's never really shown he could dominate. After he beat Wlad he was inactive and while the win over Wilder was impressive he's done little else. AJ is the most ambitious of the top guys, he's the one whose really chased a defining legacy but he's too vulnerable and then everyone else just has too many flaws and there's not really much separating the rest of the top 10. This era not only lacks a stand out heavyweight potentially dominant heavyweight but it lacks depth. Maybe Fury and AJ could go on to carve out careers that could be seen as great but I don't see anyone else who currently has that potential. Usyk even if he beats AJ isn't young, he won't be on top for long, Whyte already has 2 losses vs top guys, Wilder was always a paper champion, Joyce is too old to have a lengthy reign, Parker has stagnated over the last few years and doesn't look like he's every going to do anymore than he has already done. Compare that to 70's Ali, Foreman, Frazier, Holmes or 90's Lewis, Holyfield, Tyson, Bowe and it's clear this era isn't close to being as good as those era's.
Of course its a golden era for the brits cause the vast majority of good hws are brits. The americans do exactly the same. Your own dik tends to taste the best to most people.
It's a golden era for British HW boxing It's a garbage era for world HW boxing. Based on lack of depth of quality.
There's been too many sub-par performances. Too many pounds on some. Too little fire in others. Generally speaking, the biggest problem has been one of boxing's biggest problems - too much inactivity. Wilder first became champion at the beginning of 2015. Him, Fury and Joshua should have all had their sagas by now.
You're confusing the concept of transcending sport with transcending the marketing and sales management of sport (administration).
Joshua has come no where near transcending the sport. His intro to the US market was getting hammered by a fat guy. Lol
I beg to differ transcending the sport is when people who are not into boxing know of and support the boxer. A good example of this is housewives who don’t care about boxing love Canelo and AJ because they think they are so handsome, nice and polite or those who hated and admired Floyd so much they paid to watch him. Marketing helps to an extent but true charisma is the certain Je Ne Sais Quoi.
Sky sports is trash. When I happen to land on sky commentary I've noticed they will simply not shut the **** up for one second to watch the action. It's an incessant stream of words that have little, if any, relevance to the action. Hype manning for the in house fighter is standard. Not calling blows landed by the outsider fighter is standard. The way boxing is built up in the UK is especially disgusting for some reason. Hyping fighters so often and so early becomes cringeworthy. They hype the opponents of their star. They hype the opponents of the opponents. There's a giant machine that can be switched to "ON" and all of a sudden you've got a super star boxer. It's especially annoying to see the effects of the hype machine when a fighter like Josh Taylor, perhaps the most legit fighter out of the UK in the last few decades, gets nothing. UK boxing fans are more interested in watching an interview of Dillian Whyte trash talking Wilder than they are watching Taylor become undisputed.
It'll be looked back on as a fun and competitive era that was badly needed after the boring wasteland that was the Klitschko era (2005-2015). You know people look back on the 90's as a great HW era and in a sense it was but there A LOT of matchups that either never happened or happened too late (Lewis-Bowe, Tyson-Foreman etc.). The 90's were very good but not quite as great as people remember IMO. The current era while the talent may not be on the same level as previous eras for fun and entertainment it's not bad at all.
H2H it’s the GOAT era and there’s more international competition than ever before. I genuinely believe the top 20 now ends up getting at least 13 victories against any top 20 before 1990.
