Why does Usyk seem to avoid in-form contenders?

But that is not what you said. And I think this is an opportunity to understand the problem--you really don't put a lot of thought into your posts to think say you mean. And because you just kind of say things uncritically, you get further and further into your own little reality.

Go back and re-read how we got here and see how many times you have moved the bar for yourself.

 

He deserves criticism for taking this fight, but not for what you and others have said, he deserves criticism for calling out Wilder and he deserves criticism for avoiding Parker.
He doesn’t deserve criticism for not fighting Whyte, Hergovic, Kabayel or Wardley.
For me he knows that styles make fights and equally styles cause problems, and Parker was always going to be a nightmare for him, and I think Andy Ruiz would be the same.
Until this fight was announced (it was commonly known for a while this was the fight he was going to take), I would have argued that if he is on the decline, he hasn’t shown it in the ring but his behaviour has hinted at it, then none of those fights make sense.
For me none of them have done enough to deserve a shot at the belts, and none of them would bring enough interest or money.
But the fact is that this choice of opponent, is the worst choice in all departments and worst of all it makes mockery of the division and a disregard for his ranked peers, there’s no situation where it’s justified for him to be fighting a non ranked fighter and it’s a massive stain on what was a close to perfect career.

 

Zhang being 40 years old is an unfair assessment. Zhang had just twice demolished Joe Joyce, who was a consensus top 5 heavyweight in the world.

Joshua had not beaten a single consensus top 10 heavyweight since Ruiz in 2020.

Joshua’s team, post Usyk, was doing their best to steer Joshua away from any legit top contender, whether it was Joyce, Zhang, Bakole etc. Joshua is very gutsy himself but his team were avoiding top contenders because they knew how much Joshua had lost confidence in himself vs top opponents.

I know you are insisting that any version of Joshua is better than Zhang but this is simply untrue. A 40 year old who recently demolished a consensus top 4 heavyweight in the world is a far better win than a very good former champ who had not beaten a top notch fighter in 5 years.

Dubois pulled out vs Parker. Yes, he was sick but that means he needs to go to the back of the line.