Rate the defensive skills of these undisputed champions.

I would go
1. Crawford - reading the situation, blocking, always assessing what's coming at him
2. Usyk - head movement
3. Beterbiev - does good chin count as good defence?
4. Taylor - defence has always been an inconvenience to him
5. Inoue - from what I've seen, his form of defence is attack

 

Inoue - 8/10. Great fundamental defense, uses every aspect of defense well, slipping, blocking, great footwork. His defense has looked a little leaky at times to me recently.

Taylor - 6/10. He's not easy to hit, but defense was never his strong suit. Was always more of a brawler. Still he sometimes showcased decent defensive performances like against Ramirez.

Usyk - 9/10. Extremely hard to hit clean.atleast to the head. Great subtle head movement and fantastic in and out footwork. Great subtle use of angles aswell, less flashy than his stablemate Loma's for example. At heavyweight he's proven to be too coordinated for guys to land consistently on him. He has much more of an issue defending to the body though, which can be seen in some of his heavyweight fights.

Beterbiev - 6/10. Hittable but not extremely hittable.Uses his feet well but at times can be too stiff and upright. His defense actually looked improved to me in the Bivol rematch.

Crawford - 7/10. Leaky. He can put on great defensive displays but most of the time his opponents manage to land with a decent bit of their work. When he was younger he utilised head movement, blocking and footwork well but recently he's relied on just footwork and blocking to mixed results. Madrimov landed quite a lot on him and even Spence who was getting throuoghly mollywhopped was still landing big shots.

 

Usyk
Crawford
Inoue
Beterbiev
Taylor

 

1. Crawford
2. Usyk
3. Beterbiev
4. Inoue
5. Taylor

 

Usyk is clearly most offensively skilled of that group. And also the most defensively skilled. If he had power he might be a contender for best p4p fighter ever. If he had power it would almost be unfair.

 

Usyk isn’t in the realm of offensive ability of an Inoue or Crawford

 

I disagree.

 

Inoue Usyk and Crawford are all relative defensively and obviously much much much better defensively than the other two.

Controversial but I’d probably say Usyk has the worst defense of the 3 by a hair. Crawford or Inoue can go eitherway, Crawfords defense is more textbook particularly in terms a more sophisticated guard, better inside controls and more of a commitment to proactive lateral movement but Inoue has other stuff going for him

 

How I see it is that at mid and long range they are similarly offensively skilled, not in application but just overall. But on the inside Crawford is clearly the best offensively and Usyk is clearly the worst. There’s also the factor that Inoue and Crawford are more physically gifted which of course bolsters their offense in every way

 

Usyk is far faster p4p than Crawford is.

 

Some people in this thread clearly don't watch Inoue's fights and only catch the highlights.

 

I actually probably had Crawford and inoue ahead of usyk defensively until recently. Yes usyk has his feints, head movement, but he does get tagged often, just not nearly as often as he does the tagging

However, in the rematch with Fury his defence was absurdly good. Fury looked like he was competitive, but how many clean shots did he really land?

Usyk proved if defence is his priority, then he is a hard man to hit clean. It's just due to his high volume style, he is due to take some

Yes gun to head, Usyk has the best defence for me. Just because I rate Ali, Floyd etc higher, doesn't meant I don't think usyk is God tier

 

Usyk is the best of the lot by some distance.

Followed by Crawford/Inoue.