Usyk Fighter of the year!

Winning and achievements is not solely enough when judging ATG status otherwise Dariusz Michalczewski is an ATG coz he's only 2nd to Joe Louis in terms of most title defences.

Just winning is not enough.

Not sure if I'd say Holmes is an ATG but the rest didn't just win. Did they ? Their resume included schooling and destructions of elite fighter.

If you didn't know who Uysk was and you were to watch him - You would not be blown away.

I never said he didn't. But he didn't destroy them

I never said he didn't. But he didn't destroy them

Name me an ATG fighter from the past who has ZERO ass whooping performances against elite fighters ?

I'll wait.

Yet, everyone is calling Usyk ATG even though he has never ass-whooped any elite fighter. That means he not that much better than the fighters of his era.

Horses like Secretariat and Frankel are seen as greats, not only because of what they won but more so, because of the manner of their victories.

 

It’s fine to have a contrarian opinion. I agree with those who disagree with you.

 

The former seems like a possibility to occur but I doubt the Benavidez fight ever happens.

 

yeah, Turki tried to make the Benavidez fight happen and it didn’t. He made a few salty comments at Canelo too, which I took to mean “we just offered you more money than you’ll ever make for a single fight and you said no”.

 

I’m just not on the hype train for Usyk but his style is something new to heavyweights. Also his endurance is off the charts. Far beyond any other heavy weight. He’s redefined what being in shape means.

His endurance is good in this era, but who's he up against?

AJ is notorious for having bad stamina, Fury is a 270lb blubbersauraus who pretty much kept pace with Usyk although he got a bit tired at the end.

Usyks greatest attribute might be his discipline and fitness which yes, does put him above the other heavyweights of this era because their discipline and fitness suck.

I checked Usyk vs Joshua 1 because I believe that was the fight where Usyk showed the most activity and fitness, he threw 529 punches in that fight

I just picked a random Lennox Lewis fight that went 12 rounds, Holyfield 1. Lewis threw 613 punches in that fight.

Holyfield vs Foreman 584 punches

Klitschko threw 509 punches vs David Haye

Usyks work rate historically isn't anything special, it just seems that way against slow, low output plodders who average 25 punches a round who we have now.

 

Usyk doesn’t really have any challengers for this I think.

 

I hear you. Personally I’ve always found cross era comparisons to have little significance. You could come up with as near objective metrics to make it feasible, but the very nature of boxing means that the actions in the ring by a fighter are not necessarily only a consequence of their intentions. It takes two and maybe 3 (the ref) or even 6 (plus the judges) to tango. Often in retrospect (with exception of some extreme cases) only the results are used to reflect on a fight down the line. I believe the most informative pieces I can use to judge a fighter is the fights he actually fought. You can make some statements about relative weakness of an era and that should be all well and good, but I don’t think it is good logic to extrapolate from that to access what would have happened between any two fighters from different eras. So for me coming out on top in your era automatically gives you historical significance in a good way. After all history is a sequence of eras right? Of course you can qualify that significance by weighting it using your subjective rating of the eras, and I have no issues with that, but being at the top of your era makes you an ATG by definition. Just my 2c

 

I said similar in a thread on here today