I mean, sure, but I don't see it being particularly difficult for Usyk either. A bit too much is being made out of Kabayel's wins in regards to how a fight with Usyk would go. Don't get me wrong, Kabayel is obviously talented and these are good wins in impressive fashion, but they do little to tell us how a fight between the two would go. The one time Kabayel fought a mover in recent years, it took him nine rounds to stop the dude. Said mover was Frank Sanchez, a featherfist who came into the fight gimped. Usyk isn't a huge puncher but it's more than enough to keep folks humble, and even if he did come into the fight gimped, he'd still probably move better than anyone Kabayel's ever faced. A lot is made of the vicious body attack, but he also throws his punches fairly wide, wide enough Usyk would be able to get out of the way of them and counter most of them, so I'd be willing to bet the tactic gets abandoned fairly early in the fight. So, yeah, Kabayel would be the most difficult fight for Usyk. But in the end, that'd still probably just result in a heavyweight version of Inoue-Akhmadaliev, where by round six Kabayel would be sitting in his corner looking confused, embarrassed and defeated while his corner shouts generic boxing movie esque quotes like "Do it for Germany!" because all applicable advice has already been used up to no success.
It would have been more interesting than Usyk V Parker but Usyk isn't Zhang who is tailor made for Kabayel. Would love to see Opetaia move up!
If usyk wasn't around this would be quite an exciting time for heavyweight. Usyk is way above the Rest, but from 2-20 there are many many great matchups you could make. We measure everyone as bad because they can't beat usyk, but look at what a great fight parker and wardley gave us (the ref destroyed it though). If usyk was gone (not hoping for it) we would get lots of these fights for the titles. Kabayel dubois, wardley ajagba, hrgovic itauma, and so on. The way it is now... Everyone seems to be waiting
Usyk should retire or be forced to make 2 or 3 defences per year. Otherwise the division will just slow down and dry up. Of course the best contenders should be fighting each other with 2 or 3 fights each per year too. If they know the championship shots are only once a year, they all get playing the politics. But they will get old too. Most of them are already 30 or over. I thought Usyk had an easy fight in July. If the training camps are too severe for him that he can't manage another fight until next summer, he probably should retire.
