Would you favour any other HW in history to run Usyk's pro gauntlet 25-0?

I don't know how you could be especially confident I'm wrong when even within an era (where many important factors are held constant) it's difficult to predict fights (as you know), let alone comparing fighters 80-odd years apart.

If you believe that boxing has followed the same kind of pattern in sport generally, my claim isn't wild or bold. Quite the contrary.

 

Barring Holyfield, I don't think the cruisers you mentioned stack up at all against Usyk's era. I'd take Briedis and Hunter over all of the others with confidence.

I favour Usyk over Lewis but that's not the basis of the OP. It's a hypothetical based on the fact that other elite HW's in history, Lewis included, likely wouldn't run his gauntlet based on their actual records (one-punched by McCall and Rahman, drew with Holyfield as B-side).

 

You personally claimed that Ike's 2-0 at HW is better than Usyk's 7-0 at HW. No serious argument can be made for that and it makes a mockery of your other claim about number of HW wins being so important.

You claim that Usyk has "2 A-grade wins" when he beat Fury and Joshua on not two but four occasions. You've said that the extra wins are "meaningless" to you, even though it's obviously and statistically much harder to win twice against top opponents than to win once. Your derisive claims about "Euro level" also lack definition. Was Mildenberger Euro level? KO threat is also vital to consider as even B-levelers can one-punch ATG's, even if they don't hit as hard as Dubois.

You had Usyk as a "top 3" cruiser before. Who is the other guy you think may be/probably is better?

I don't care what Usyk would say, he has a humble persona. If he thought he'd school Ali or Louis (and he probably does) he wouldn't say so. It wouldn't do him any favours with the Western boxing establishment.

Usyk is more of an industructable machine than other top HW's who got schooled by Young and Morrison, TKO'd by Puritty, Sanders and Brewster or one-punched by McCall, Rahman and dropped more results besides that.

 

I didn't bother reading your post because a got four lines in and knew it would all be ill-informed and ridiculous.

I'll inject some rationality:

In order to win every fight on Usyk's record, there would have to be no one on Usyk's record who was a quality/stylistic problem for him, whether over one or two fights. He'd have to be extremely consistent, never have a bad off night, or get derailed by a devastating punch. He'd have to either always stop the opponent (which didn't happen much when he fought good opposition) or he'd have to overcome being the B-side on the scorecards (which he didn't have a lot of experience doing). He'd also have to keep this level of performance up into advanced age (Usyk will soon be the oldest ever Ring HW champion).

We know from history that M. Spinks, Douglas, Moorer, J. Ruiz, McCall, Rahman, Byrd, Puritty, Sanders and Brewster were all capable of upsetting top HW's, always or almost always as B-side fighters.

In reality, Holyfield dropped results on seven occasions at age 39. Given this, he'd have next to no chance of going flawless vs Usyk's list.

 

Had Holmes (6'3, 215 lbs being his average title weight, which was big in that era) been the B-side he could have easily lost to or drawn with Norton, Witherspoon or Williams (he didn't rematch any of them) before he actually lost at age 35 to former LHW Spinks.

He was also vulnerable to rights: down against a 188 lbs novice pro/future journeymen, down against 202 lbs Weaver, down against non-titlist Shavers, down and saved by the ropes against non-KO artist, non-titlist Snipes. KO'd in 4 by Tyson.

Given this, it's extremely unlikely.