Fury will not acknowledge his defeats

Realistically it’s not clear that Usyk is the better “boxer” than Fury (meaning skills, as I think this is the way you meant it), to be fair.. and I say this as someone who feels Usyk won both fights clearly.

….but he’s better in a lot of other categories, like discipline both in and outside the ring, conditioning, toughness, and more… making him a clearly superior fighter.

 

For me, the better 'man' won, one thing I'd dispute is that Usyk is tougher. Fury is an anomaly, his powers of recovery and sheer will to recover are incredible.

 

Well put on “the better man won”!

Yeah I thought of that when I posted too, I stuck with it basically on the basis that Usyk probably has a better chin. but Fury has elite recovery abilities.

 

Depends what you mean by tough. Usyk's never been knocked down in his professional career so he's never had to demonstrate his recuperative powers, but then... he's never been knocked down. That speaks for itself.

Fury's been down and badly hurt a number of times, some against some pretty shoddy punchers like Firtha and Wallin, so objectively he's demonstrated a lesser degree of toughness than Usyk. But then he's had to get off the canvas numerous times and displayed some pretty incredible recovery abilities. But who's to say Usyk wouldn't display those as well?

 

How do you evaluate "boxing skills"? It's a pretty abstract metric.

 

Eye test and round win rate?

 

What about defence?

 

How many times they've been knocked down and out? Where chin ends and defense begins is a little arbitrary.

Usyk does way better by these metrics than the rounds won one thats for sure. The same was true of Holyfield. I do think that the CWs that successfully come up to HW are certainly "tough". Just like Chagaev even though he was a pure HW. Even in olden times you don't really see combo fighters with a glass jaw. I feel thats a neccessity.

 

Usyk has never had a really close (as in argument for robbery close) fight in his career. He's always won more rounds than his opponents or stopped them and made it moot.

I don't see Fury as the clear favourite here either.

 

"He's always won more rounds than his opponents or stopped them and made it moot."

You are just defining a win here. I can copy this line and use it as a defense anytime someone critcizes any fighter for not being dominant. Its basically just "a wins a win".

Usyk is better than Fury but Usyk could have very easily lost that first fight there.

 

What about quality of opponents?

Fight bums and you'll look better on the eye and win more rounds, surely?

 

Thats arbitrary. Its something we all are aware of and account for in different ways.

I'm not sure how elo would work for boxing. But we should probably have something like that.

 

He could, but he would get robbed if he did. Fury didn't win more than 5 rounds plus he was knocked down.

 

Up to a point, yes... and most of us are aware of it, there's some here I wouldn't credit with much degree of thoughtfulness at all (present company naturally excepted).

But it's still the case that the eye test and number of rounds won are worthless metrics without weighting for quality of opponents, regardless of how subjective that is.

Just because there's a degree of arbitrary and subjectivity in there doesn't mean it's a worthless observation - indeed, I'd say it's worthless to consider those metrics without at least trying to factor that in.