Would you agree that Usyk, Fury, Joshua, Dubois and Parker are the top five heavies of the era?

There is not much to argue here. Klitschko was before this era, itauma and others are after. Whyte is the only one i can think of to argue about, but parker wins by longevity.

I only want to add, that apart from usyk everyone is a native english speaker and that makes a difference. Others have way less opportunities to shine. Less support. Probably worse structures that help with 'enhancements' (fury before his most important fight vs klitschko, whyte with the columbian opponent AND now maybe parker after wardley confirmed and also as an unconfirmed personal suspicion of mine: joshua).

Took forever to get a good fight for hrgovic. Because less interest from paying fans. Same with kabayel. Obviously he could take harder challenges, but if he was english, i am sure he would have gotten a great deal against someone right after the chisora win.

Think about that. You must be blind with nationalistic patriotism if you think english speaking Fighters are just that much better.

 

Kabayel and Itauma could easily be better in H2H terms

 

That's not a good barometer when so many guys are being ducked though. Also many younger guys will go on to accomplish more things in the future which could boost their ratings

I'm skeptical of Joshua and Fury partially because they have been handed so many opportunities that others were denied

 

Dubois and Parker don't have that many wins worth mentioning. Bryan and Lerena need to go, as well as about 6 from Parker's list.

Also, Lerena and Massey are 3rd tier cruiserweights, certainly worse and possibly no heavier in the ring than some of Usyk's cruiser opponents, who themselves fought and accomplished more at HW.

For me, the most proven HW's between Wlad and Usyk are those who will get into the HoF: Fury, Wilder and Joshua. Dubois rounds out the top 5 at the present time.

 

If you ask me to name the top five, then I would be putting the bottom three fighters in the same class as Fury and Usyk. Fury and Usyk are far superior to the others. We saw that last night in the Wardley vs. Dubois fight.

It would be more accurate to divide them into two groups:

Elite level: Usyk and Fury
Sub-elite top five: Kabayel, Dubois, Itauma, Joshua, Wardley

 

There are too many problems with Parker for me. One is no proven KO ability sans a morbidly obese, jetlagged, 1 day notice Bakole, who was also previously stopped by Hunter, who never stopped anyone else.

Another is he lost to Joshua, Whyte, Joyce and Wardley all in his prime, should have lost the first Chisora fight, and was stopped twice in these fights, hitting the canvas four times.

I expect Parker is past his best now, so I doubt there will be any more significant wins. His best were a career fattest, older Zhang which Parker scraped, Chisora the 2nd time round, and a location decision in NZ against Ruiz, which was more of a draw.

Parker did show a willingness to take tough/dangerous fights but for me he was never on a top 5 level.

 

I have explained it.

 

He has wilder posters on his wall. Jerks off to them every night

 

No. Because they(as a group) didn't prove it. They just won belts kept them and fought each other. Usyk and Dubois probably belong in the top 5. Fury, Joshua and Parkers standing was inherited from before the pandemic. Since mid 2019(7 years ago) Fury, Joshua and Parkers combined feats read

3x wins over Wilder
3x wins over Chisora
2x wins over Wallin
2x wins over Ngannou
short notice win over Bakole
Zhang
Whyte
Andy Ruiz rematch
Makhmudov
Pulev
Franklin
Helenius

Kabayel, Hrgovic, Frank Sanchez, Jarrell Miller, Bakole, Ajagba and Okolie were almost totally frozen out. Jared Andersons a bit younger and even hes been waiting around for years at this point.