If Usyk wants to rest, fight once a year and be family man - he gotta give up the belts

To be honest I was done with the fury Joshua ‘era’ years ago, Usyk did the job I wanted and came and exposed them.
Now it’s Time for these old guys to retire, they all are pushing 40, Joshua is done, Fury is done, Usyk has done what he needed, they should just all retire now and we can have hopefully a better era of young heavyweights

 

"Names" ain't a thing. A fight is a fight.

 

You do have a point here. People pine for the one belt era but that worked in a time where boxers fought every other week and there were title defenses regularly, sometimes as often as every month. People on here unironically think it's ok for a challenger to have their momentum stalled for months or even years just because they like the champion. Replace the name 'Usyk' with 'Canelo' in some of these posts and you would see some laughable hypocrisy in the responses.

If the current HW division went back to one belt it would cause massive stagnancy with how irregularly big names like Usyk, AJ, Fury etc fight. @GlaukosTheHammer also has some cool posts on why you can't necessarily trust lineal from a historical perspective too.

 

Belts have very little value when there's an apparent champion.

No fighter in the division would honestly say they should be the favorite against Usyk. We do not need belts for guidance of who is best.

 

That's a great point you are making with the defense against boxing being taken over!

I also see that it helps get fighters recognition when they can fight for a belt and it's true that there have to be smaller goals than just to be the number one undisputed in your weight class. Somehow people have to be built up and it is probably not gonna suffice to have good fights.

But I still feel that my anger at the current system is justified and that judging from the perspective of already interesting fighters and having lots of interesting fights people already are craving for - the current system is rather in the way than helping us get the fights we want.

 

Wasn't Fury fighting mostly bums while champ? And less than once a year?

 

And how much respect did people have for him?

 

If Lineal Champs had been stripped for not fighting their #1 in a timely manner, most long time Lineal Heavyweight Champions would have been stripped. What a mess that would have created. Oleksandr Usyk is the Lineal Heavyweight Champion. I would cut him some slack. He has earned it.

 

People with objectivity had zero, but one island considered him the goat.

 

I am from that island, have zero in common in terms of culture with Fury (or Joshua), and didn’t consider either of them great shakes at all. It’s time now they and Usyk retire and we go again.

 

Pre-body champions being stripped is exactly what starts American boxing.

Who did Burke win his title off of?

Interesting how that man is not an English champion and did not win any title from the lineage of English Champions.

Where did Bendigo get his belt? Interesting how it isn't Burke isn't it?

Champ is Ward.

Ward refuses Burke, heaps.

Burke fights O'Rourke for the English title.

Ward still has his belt, refuses to fight Burke or give up the title to Burke, continues claiming champion status

Burke and Ward both make claim

Burke loses to Bendigo

Ward gives Bendigo the belt.

Was Ward not stripped?

No historians cut the reign of Def Burke. Contemporaries argued but mostly sided with Burke. Seems like Ward was stripped for refusing to fight Burke and held the belt ransom until Bendigo got the status off of Burke.

 

Fury was ducking Usyk and stalling, also Usyk had to fight AJ again because there was a rematch clause in the contract.

 

I didn't realise but apparently Usyk asked for a 90 day extension to negotiate with Parker for the WBO defense due to injury/illness. The WBO said no and granted 30 days instead.

Is Usyk and team not taking the **** a bit with that length of time? It seems a bit excessive for what should be a straight forward decision if they are going to fight Parker or not.

 

Usyk is done from a sporting perspective . Dubois too .