Who looked worse: Fury against Ngannou or Usyk against Verhoeven?

Rico definitely can box, but again he is 37. But it is his second official fight and against best HW. Frankly it’s either Usyk didn’t take this fight seriously, which is more likely, or he deteriorated seriously or both.

I don’t want to belittle Rico, but the picture on the ring should have been different. Doubt that the major thing was Rico, with all due serious respect for him.

 

Spinks was an established boxer. Rico? Not so much.

Though I'm thoroughly impressed with Rico and think he has a bright career ahead of him

 

Virtually nobody even considers Rico to be the greatest heavyweight, yet alone the greatest kickboxer of all time. He reigned over a much weaker division compared to its golden age in the 1990s and 2000s. He might just barely scrap into the top 10 kickboxing heavyweights if that. I respect Rico. He was a good kickboxer. But people shouldn't just make things up just to try to make sense of Usyk's struggles here.

 

I ****ing hate these gimmick/crossover fights. Now whenever this era is discussed we need to bring up how the two consensus best guys in it had contentious difficult fights with guys from another sport. Its damaging to their credibility and by extension the credibility of the whole era.

Its one thing to say "okay they'd get their ass kicked in MMA or kickboxing but in a boxing ring they're untouchable", its another entirely to have MMA guys and kickboxers come over to boxing and give them that much trouble.

 

Hes obviously not the greatest kickboxer ever or even the greatest HW kickboxer, but you're downplaying him still. He does not "barely scrape" into the top 10 all time HWs, hes closer to top 5. I'd put Hoost, Semmy, Aerts, Badr, Remy and JLB ahead but he probably beats some of those guys too.

 

Fury looked generally sloppy and blundering as well as ineffective, Usyk looked flummoxed, the guy was just shockingly surgical in his execution of that odd style. Fury didn't train properly, Usyk is the consummate professional. Does that make his performance better than Usyk's? I guess we will find out when Rico has another fight, we saw Ngannou clearly wasn't as good as we thought because AJ picked him apart in two rounds.

 

Both have done unimaginable damage to the sport, but it has to be Fury. Rico was an elite kickboxer, so half of his discipline was with his hands; he had sparred with boxers and fought pros before. Francis was an MMA fighter, hadn't boxed before, had Fury on the floor, wasn't hurt once, and went the distance, not to mention Fury was much younger than Usyk is now.

 

Tbf to Ngannou, I think that was mainly just a really bad day at the office for him rather than a full reflection of how good or bad he is. He stupidly switched to Southpaw, got caught hard early and couldnt recover. He never had a chance to get going or make AJ feel his power.

I dont think hes a top 10 level guy, but he can very likely do much better than he did there.

 

I’d put Rob Kaman, Andy Hug, and Alexey Ignashov above him, too. Just off the top of my head. They actually beat great fighters when they were great. Rico is a lot like Wladimir Klitschko. A long period of dominance with no signature wins over any great fighters in their primes.

But, anyway, my point was we shouldn't elevate Rico just because he gave Usyk fits. Usyk is still obviously one of the all-time great, but this was an unfortunate chapter to his near spotless legacy that didn't need to happen. I'm a big fan of Usyk, too. He should have retired after Dubois. It was the perfect ending.

 

Kaman was not a proper career HW though, obviously a very gifted technical fighter but I dunno if he could overcome Ricos size, same with Hug who really was an undersized HW and paid for it fairly often by just getting outmuscled.

Ignashov was a big talented fighter and could definitely give Rico problems. The thing with kickboxing though is all the big names fought each other so often that it felt like on any given night they could all beat each other. Rico would absolutely be in that mix.

 

My 2 cents, I can’t really compare the 2 fights because Fury/Ngannou was 10 rounds and this was 12. Inexperienced fighters really fade in those last 2 or 3 rounds. If I compared based on the first 10, I think Usyk was beaten.

More importantly though, while Usyk and Fury are both great boxers, they ultimately lack KO power. That makes these fights a bit more dangerous for them when they can’t quite figure out a style.

AJ, Wilder and Dubois would probably end these fights much easier. But they’re not better boxers. Just more power

 

Usyk didn’t look bad. He looked like usyk to me. Rico was just better than expected and he had a great gameplan. I think a lot of usyk fans are on damage limitation duty today. It’s not as if Usyk looked like Canelo vs Crawford or Eubank vs Benn. He fought 12 rounds at a high pace whilst constantly moving and got back into the fight once Rico slowed down, and looked like his usual sharp self in doing so.

 

It might just be that Verhoeven is able to translate his no doubt ludicrous kickboxing knowledge into fighting using only his hands and is extremely adept in that discipline too, he is certainly supremely capable having seen what we have. Usyk could have had a bad night for various reasons or lost some of himself overnight, he still fought one of the greatest boxers in history who nobody thought was anywhere close to shot despite being almost 40. Maybe he fights someone who fights nothing like Usyk and who will go to war trading bombs and knock him out no problem, people will call him a bum and say Usyk is trash because he had a lot of trouble with him. I don’t think there’s a simple explanation so people swing one way or the other.

 

Usyk performed surprisingly poorly for himself. He gave up the initiative for a long moment and then hit the gas pedal far too late. Either Rico's fighting style caught him off guard, or they chose the wrong tactics, which was difficult to overcome later. This doesn't change the fact that by round 10, Rico was already heavily impacted and was already exhausted. In round 11, he was badly hurt and sent to the floor. He bought himself time by spitting out his guard, causing subsequent punches, which were landing like butter in the corner, to land too late. The referee should have given him a chance, but he would have taken a terrible beating in round 12, with a 90% chance.
Fury was down and generally didn't harm Ngannou. Usyk definitely came out the better of the fight.
Usyk had a somewhat similar situation in his fight with Tony Bellew, where it was a close fight, but ultimately, he brutally won it for himself.
People are reacting a bit too emotionally. Since Usyk is a historically brilliant fighter, he's expected to demonstrate brilliant performances, but he's only human, after all, and in the final stretch of his career. It's worth noting that despite his weaker performance, he was able to salvage the situation with the giant jumping around like a grasshopper for 30 minutes.