Four best heavyweights post Lennox Lewis.

1. Wlad
2. Usyk
3. Fury
4. Vitali

 

Resume (only at HW):
1-) Wlad
2-) Usyk
3-) Fury
4-) Vitali

H2H:
1-) Usyk
2-) Fury
3-) Wlad
4-) Vitali

 

I'm a wee bit surprised, bordering on shocked, to see so many still putting Wladimir ahead of Usyk.

 

64-5 record at heavyweight, 18 title defences, 15-4 record against Top 10 competition, reigned for almost 10 years. Wlad has one of the best resumes of all time. Usyk, as great as he is, has only 8 heavyweight fights against 5 opponents. He has the quality but doesn't have the quantity. Wlad has both.

 

I'm not as impressed with Wladimir's longevity and numbers as most others. I'm not even going to get into the fact that he also had to flout the rules of boxing to get along the way he did, which Usyk doesn't.

Sure, fifteen years between his first and last days as a world title holder is impressive, but for how much of that was he actually the best Heavyweight in the world? 2000 to 2003 he was a paper champion, seeing as Lewis was the divisional king, that Rahman blip aside.

2004 to 2008 were the absolute doldrum years of the division. Horrendous title holders, snooze fest title fights (Brewster-Liakhovich aside) and even then Wlad wasn't really distancing himself from the pack.

Fair enough, he got himself together around 2008/09, but the spectre of Vitali returning to the division always left me with doubts about Wlad even being the best in his family, never mind the world. Once Vitali shuffled off the stage, Wlad did what he needed to as champion and the clear number one - but who was he fighting? Joshua, Dubois and Fury might not float everyone's boat, but is anyone going to try and tell me they're not better than Chagaev, Haye, Povetkin or Pulev for example?

Wlad had most things well in his favour throughout his reign and still never impressed me as much with his performances as Usyk has at Heavyweight, despite Usyk almost always fighting in his opponent's back yard and giving away a decent chunk of size. Usyk would be crucified in some quarters for fighting some of the second-raters Wlad feasted on for years.

 

1- Wlad
2- Usyk
3- Fury
4- Vitali

 

Joshua should be ranked higher than Vitali based off accomplishments although I think Vitali was a better fighter than Joshua

Fury ahead of Vitali in everything

 

Wlad
Vitali
Usyk
Fury

 

The only way how we should assess the fighter is how he performed in his own era. Between 2006 and 2015 Wlad was clearly number 1 heavyweight in the world. Beat every number 1 contender, except for his brother of course. Cleaned out the division out of the top heavyweights that wanted to fight him. Vitali didn't do much to be considered better than Wlad during these years. Mainly fought second and third tier heavyweights.

Did Wladimir fight some second and third raters? Sure. But if you look at the heavyweights who had long reigns - mainly Joe Louis and Larry Holmes, both of them had their fair share of bums they faced. Even Muhammad Ali during his 70's reign fought guys like Coopman and Dunn. And he wasn't reigning for 10 years.

 

I felt like Wladimir was laxing a bit in terms of the fights in 2012-2014 guys like Wach and Pianeta and Mormeck. In this time frame would have been nice to see him fight Tyson Fury or Deontay Wilder as one these defenses in 2012-2013. Felt like there was better competition for him to fight but some were mandatories to be fair so no choice there.

 

Between 2012 and 2014 he fought 2 number 1 rated contenders - Povetkin and Pulev. Stiverne wanted no parts of Wlad, neither did Wilder. In 2015 he fought a Top 10 guy in Jennings and he lost his crown to another number 1 contender he faced - Tyson Fury. I think that's a damn good record for 3 years even with fighting Wach, Pianeta and Mormeck in the meantime.

 

I was probably being a bit harsh. Leapai was a mandatory and Mormeck was a warm up fight after surgery. I was obviously wasn't including 2015.

 

Yeah, the stretch from fighting Haye to fighting Povetkin was the weakest of his reign without the doubt. But it was still only 2 years out of almost 10 and both Wach and Pianeta were undefeated at the time. He definitely added to his legacy with his stretch after that tho.

 

It's understandable as you need stay busy fights.