Is Fury the worst 'recognised' Heavyweight Champion in history?

He certainly isn’t the worst alphabet champion. But his “Recognised” champion bit. If you do “Recognise” as in Lineal champion then he’s not the worst but his Lineal claim isn’t 100%. Klitschko never unified not Fury. Every other Lineal champion that won a vacant title was undisputed/unified. Schmeling and Patterson. Any other non unified Lineal champion won it in the ring. Ali 3rd Reign, Holmes vs Ali, Moorer, Foreman 2 reign, Briggs, Lewis, Rahman, Holyfield 2nd Reign. So either recognition he isn’t the worst. Charles Martin alphabet. Leon Spinks or Marvin Hart Lineal.

 

Great post.

Fury lost lineal when he ducked the Wlad rematch. Since then he doesn't have the resume of a HW champ and he's held the division hostage by ducking AJ, Usyk and others. He's Otto Wallin level, no disrespect to Otto.

 

As much as I wish it was otherwise, you can't lose the lineal title by ducking people. It's surprisingly hard to lose it even by retiring.

 

hard to lose something that only exists in certain peoples minds to begin with.

 

Yup. But within the rules that the people who believe in the lineal title follow, it's harder to get rid of than a smoking habit.

 

A lot of good names already mentioned worse than Fury, I'll add a couple that I haven't seen: Lamon Brewster, Siarhei Liakovich, and Nikolai Valuev.

The problem with Fury isn't that he's the worst HW champion. His problem is people rank him far too high, as if he'd beat every champion H2H because he's a tall guy who moves well. Also, he is a shameless ducker so he gets a lot of hate. Objectively he is a very good HW champion, better than most. But he also gets overrated at the same time and his resume is solid but not one of an ATG.

 

The amount of butt hurt Fury causes is hilarious. He will eventually fight everyone relevant including Usyk and when it's all said and done Fury will be the last man standing IMO.

 

In his recent reign he's fought one guy who was a top fighter in Wilder. Other than that he has been the King of Cans and a coward to avoid Usyk.