Is the Heavyweight division historically weak?

None of them fought for titles , they fought for a title.

Soup cans like Pianeta , Wach , Leapai , Mormok etc would never fight for the unified titles in this era like they did in the last era.

A novice 18 fight AJ overcame adversity when he stopped Wlad. A 24 fight Wlad couldn't overcome adversity when he fought Ross Purity.

 

Nothing out of the ordinary here. Wilder , Fury , Whyte all fought in Dec of 2018. They are all scheduled to fight again next month.

 

And as I pointed out, the opposition is underwhelming. Rivas is a good fight, but most expected more from Whyte after his spectacular 2018.
The guys you names should be fighting each other, yet aren't even close to doing so.

 

He went on to dominate a decade

 

Whyte fought Lucas Browne, Joseph Parker and Dereck Chisora in 2018.
Oscar Rivas is better than Browne and probably better than Chisora (certainly younger/fresher).
And Whyte barely beat Parker anyway. So he's unlikely to attempt that level again in a hurry.

The truth is, not everyone can fight people ranked above themselves. This is obviously increasingly true the higher they get ranked.

Instead of being unimpressed with Whyte, we could easily be praising Rivas for stepping up.

 

All the top guys should be fighting each other in every division. Thats not a problem thats exclusive to Heavyweights.

The guys on the p4p list aren't exactly fighting the best of opponents either. Spence fought a 135 pounder on PPV and GGG is fighting a guy ranked outside the top 90.

There's good quality fights at HW being fought almost on a monthly basis ad the future hold plenty of great match-ups. The division is in a great place atm.

 

In Spence's defense:
Garcia had fought at 140 and had won a title there.
Garcia was widely considered among the 10 P4P

The problem with the heavyweight is that the big fights don't seem to be on the horizon. Fury is saying he can do whatever he wants, that he already has proven himself.
Wilder turned down 120mil and keeps insisting on 2020.
Whyte seemingly let his ego get to him.

 

At least Fury and Wilder already fought. The rematch is bound to happen.

Look down through through the divisions. Big fights not happening is a problem for every division.

 

Dude, I was just talking about the heavyweights. You are completely derailing the subject here.

The question was that is the division weak? And it's not. I just pointed out how last year was quite good and they have their ups and downs(in years). This year thus far has been ****, and nothing great is on the horizon.
The talent is there, but they are not always fighting each other. So it looks like a weak run.

 

My take, the 1990's had a lot of talent, post Wlad this division does not currently. The good news, there is a top batch working their way up.

But is it that weak? Fury, Wilder and AJ need to fight each other at least once, and stop picking easy marks for title defenses. That is weak.

 

The Heavyweight division has always been weak talent wise, simply due to people, on average, not being heavyweight size. Some of the most talented men you see at Heavyweight are generally 'smaller', and talented fighters stick out so much more in the division.

As the size of the heavyweights increases (on average), the more bereft talent is.

 

You need to have lived in the 90's and actually follow boxing however in that time period to understand how it was viewed.

How can one grasp the concept of what era was better if you didn't live in it ?

A brief description of the 90's is the top 2 guys never fought and the top guy ( Lewis ) took almost ten years to fight for a unification fight against a past prime other guy ( Holyfield) .

M.Tyson was still relevant in 1991 ,but AFTER ? Not so much.

The era itself was very exciting ( though you wouldn't know it unless you did what you're doing here. lol )

Top guys were Lewis / Holyfield / Tyson / Morrison /Ruddock / Tua / Foreman / Briggs etc.....

Todays era has much more prime guys fighting each other with a more bigger talent pool overall in a Young era.

Plenty of time for AJ vs wilder still and if not will we penalize the era and continue to pretend the 90's were better ?

Weve already had an unprecented quality title fights from Aj not matched by ANYONE so far to what is available in the era. you would know this if you studied the entire history just look up ANY HW fighter and title defenses and see who fought who when and where...lol

That being said a handful of guys are better today then the 90's ,some aren't.

Joshua is easily one of the toughest guys to defeat at any time,Fury is a 6'9 giant and Wilder has a punchers chance against most guys in the 90's.

Usyk, Hrgovic ,Ortiz , even guys like Breazeale could get by Axel Shultz ( look him up ) who were fringe title contenders then .

I would probably consider now a better era,more competitive and more overall top guys who can win on any given night as its a not as predictable as most fights were in the 90's as fighters are still developing as top 10 guys .

Only guys who have hit the limit are Ortiz/ Povetkin and Pulev,. The rest will continue to improve and Joshua the way hes winning is PROOF how good he really is. let me know if he gets knocked out in his 25th fight ? lol

The Hw division has never been historically weak minus an era or two,only weak minded fans, probably never laced up gloves before or hit a heavy bag ?

 

It was the best thing about boxing a few years ago and it got more casuals interested.
Now hv boxers just seem to be ducking eachother

 

Yes it is and has always been weak and boring contrasted with the lighter weights...but it seems people are wowed by these guys.