Can someone explain to me, through his resume, why people call Usyk a top 5 ATG?

Who calls Usyk a Top 5 HW ever? A very small majority of observers. You got more fans calling Mike Tyson the GOAT than those calling Usyk a Top 5.

 

Beating Witherspoon cements it for me

 

Top 5 HW? I don't think many do TBH.. probably a top 30 P4P ATG though.. at HW I'd have him between 10 & 15... & at CW definitely #1... Fury X2, Joshua X2, Dubois X2, Chisora & possibly Wardley is a fantastic run in such a short space of time though, plus he's always at a size disadvantage.. It's speculative all of it.. it depends how you value modern fighters against past fighters.. you can pick holes in anyone's resume... Joshua still beat Ruiz & Pulev & took care of Ngannou with ease.. Fury was coming off of wins over Wilder, Whyte & Chisora regardless of the Ngannou debacle (which he probably didn't even take seriously until he got flattened & started boxing a bit).. Dubois was on a decent run & Chisora is what he is..

Usyk beat the best available to him, thats all u can really do.

 

Eye test.

Usyk has the skills to compete in any era. If you know boxing you know that when you see him fight. His ring/boxing IQ is off the charts, his stamina is insane, his footwork is brilliant, he's got sniper like accuracy with his punches, he's got the Michael Jordan competitiveness + clutch gene, and he's got a steel chin.

If we just base who the best boxers are just off of resume, then there will never be any top boxers ever again. The sport has evolved. It's more niche and because of monetary concerns dudes can't fight as much as they used to back in the day. So like, if Moses Itauma goes on to own the HW division for the next 15 years, he can't be considered great because he doesn't have Lennox Lewis, Holyfield, Ali, Usyk on his resume?

And you say we're not taking his Cruiserweight fights into account. Ok, but why not? For every era before the 90s, those Cruiserweights are essentially HWs. Muhammed Ali was fighting guys like Bert Cooper who weighed in under 190 pounds. Rocky Marciano would be a light heavy in today's world. Joe Louis weighed in under 200 pounds for basically his entire career. So can those guys not be considered great HWs now? Are we only counting big fat guys?

In reality, this is just another version of the tired, lazy, stupid argument of "the current era of HWs suck!" That argument has been around forever and it's always been dumb. In the 70s people said Ali and Foreman were garbage and would have been washed by Joe Louis and the dudes of the 50s. In the 80s, Larry Holmes was ridiculed and talked down on because he wasn't Ali. In the 90s Lennox Lewis got no respect for the large majority of his career and was considered an overrated joke who didn't fight tough enough competition.

In 20-30 years people will look back fondly on this era of boxing. Wilder, Fury, AJ, and Usyk will be legends that people love for the amazing fights they put on. They'll be lauded for saving boxing after the doldrums of the Klitschko Era. And all of those guys will be put into the Hall of Fame.

 

You could downplay every other legendary heavyweight in the same sort of fashion.

Ali? Got knocked down by Henry Cooper. Liston was shot and slow. Cleveland Williams was on the brink of death before he fought Ali. Foreman's and Frazier's resumes are thin and overrated. Norton wasn't that good.

Lennox? KO'd twice, beat guys who had already been beaten (Mercer, Ruddock, Holyfield, Tyson...) and didn't give Vitali a rematch...

Their achievements are what they are.

 

They think Fury, Joshua and Dubois are such a special group of 3 fighters that beating them with difficulty as a smaller guy puts Usyk in the GOAT convo without anything else. Some mumbo jumbo about how guys who lost to Andy Ruiz and Francis Ngannou are the peak of human evolution. Since everyone today is better then everyone yesterday the best HW today is better then the best HW yesterday.

Terrible argument but that seems to be what they are going for.

 

Wilder Fury etc didn't fight their contemporaries. Why would people celebrate an era where so many big fights didn't happen and so many guys have poor resumes.

You don't save boxing via ducking everyone. Wilder beat two ranked opponents. Fury beat three

 

Usyk doesn't need anything from u bro

 

He doesn't. He may have a biggest win out of these 2 in Wlad, but ducking the rematch brings the value of this scalp down. Usyk has 4 top wins after that: Fury x2 and AJ x2. Then we have Wilder 2x on Fury's side and Dubois on Usyk's side, in which case I think Dubois II was a bigger win than Wilder III. Usyk clearly has a better resume and H2H 2x wins against him in the same era. But of course not a resume that's Top 5 all time worthy.

So, counting their Top 10 wins:

1. Wladimir Klitschko (Fury)
2. Tyson Fury I (Usyk)
3. Tyson Fury II (Usyk)
4. AJ I (Usyk)
5. AJ II (Usyk)
6. Wilder II (Fury)
7. Dubois II (Usyk)
8. Wilder III (Fury)
9. Whyte (Fury)

 

Ali and the old era boxers got recatagorized into cruiserweights. So, by that logic, Usyk is a top 2-3 heavyweight of all time, but doesn't break the top 15 cruiserweight ATG list. So, there is a trade off.