Could we be living in a classic heavyweight era?

Big purse, big era

When you talk about eras in heavyweight boxing, it is worth noting that we could be living through a pretty good one right now. 

It is always considered sacrilege to compare any heavyweight era to the 1970s, but among Tyson Fury, Oleksandr Usyk, Anthony Joshua, Dillian Whyte, with Deontay Wilder, Joe Joyce, Filip Hrgovic and Daniel Dubois behind them, there are some cracking fights to be made. The hope, as always, is that they actually happen. 

The WBC purse bid for Fury-Whyte fight, drew a mighty top offer of $41.025million from Frank Warren’s Queensberry Promotions, Fury’s promoter. It was a bid that smashed the previous record for a purse bid by more than $10million. That was set by The Mirage hotel in Las Vegas to stage the heavyweight title fight between James “Buster” Douglas, fresh off his shock win over Mike Tyson, and Evander Holyfield in 1990. Interest in the heavyweights is peaking again. 

As heavyweight eras go, the one that Holyfield boxed through – and Douglas briefly – was a good one. Tyson had swept away a group of big men that had handed the world titles around after Larry Holmes’s peak, who himself had come in on the end of the careers of Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman and Ken Norton. 

Fury vs Whyte brings clarity

With or without all the backchat and politics that surrounds it, Fury-Whyte is a good fight, and should be the first in a series of fights that should produce some clarity to an always complicated heavyweight picture. 

A year ago, there would have plenty of people willing to make a case for either Fury or Joshua as the world No 1. Towards the end of last year, many were expecting an undisputed heavyweight title bout between Fury and Joshua, seeing their intervening fights as a formality. 

Joshua’s loss to Usyk last September seemed to have ended all of that, although the coronation of Fury after Joshua’s loss should not be instant. Times change, there are boxers out there to beat, points to be made. 

There were plenty of people willing to shut the book on Fury’s career and legacy when he repeated his win over Deontay Wilder in Las Vegas last October. Some wanted to crown him not only the premier heavyweight of this era, but the greatest British heavyweight of all time, trumping Lennox Lewis. 

Anthony Joshua should get a rematch against Oleksandr Usyk in May

Fury not the greatest - yet

There are problems with both arguments, though. Any pronouncements of greatness have to be backed up by records. Fury has boxed in four world title fights, against two opponents – Wladimir Klitschko back in 2015 and Wilder (three times). 

The win over Klitschko was a brilliant tactical performance, although not quite the boxing masterclass it has been repainted as over the years and it is worth noting that Klitschko was a strong favourite for the contracted rematch that was twice cancelled when Fury’s life went off the rails. 

And while a draw and two wins against Wilder is undeniably impressive, no one is going to call the American a top 20 heavyweight of all time, so beating him should not make Fury one of the all-time greats, especially when there is another unbeaten world champion at present in Usyk. 

And who wouldn’t want to see Fury v Usyk? Or Whyte? Or Joshua? The bottom line is that Fury’s route to greatness is through all of those names. Ali wasn’t great just because of who he was, but because he boxed everyone from Liston to Holmes, via Frazier, Norton, Foreman, Shavers and the rest. 

AJ still a work in progress

With Dillian Whyte having signed the contract to fight Tyson Fury, most likely on April 23 at Wembley, Anthony Joshua can now go ahead with his rematch against Oleksandr Usyk, probably in late May for the WBA, WBO and IBF titles. With talk of Joshua seeking a new trainer a match against an incredibly talented southpaw like the Ukrainian will be a tough ask. 

Many thought that size would make skill irrelevant when they boxed last time. But Joshua remains a work in progress and having refined his skills to win his rematch against Andy Ruiz in 2019 by boxing on the backfoot, he has moved more and more away from the seek-and-destroy power puncher that made him successful. The result was the Usyk loss, which Joshua allowed to become the sort of boxing match he was completely unsuited to. 

Early in his career, the comparisons were made between the fast-rising Joshua and Lennox Lewis. Those calculations are now being revised downwards to Frank Bruno, a comparison that would have been scoffed when he was destroying everyone in front of him. 

The style match with Usyk, who was able to beat him to the punch and get under his jab, always looked a tricky one. And losing to Usyk should not mean his chances against Fury should be completely discounted. The idea that styles make fights, might be an old cliché, but there is plenty of truth to it.  

Likewise, Whyte represents a very different challenge to Fury than Wilder did. He might lack the one-punch power of the American and does not have his speed, but he is more durable than Wilder and has better balance too. 

What the huge Fury-Whyte purse bid showed was that these fights now seem too big not to happen. For years, the diverging interest of promoters and broadcasters have led fighters in opposite directions. But there is a real appetite for the best against the best right now and we can put off writing about this generation of heavyweights’ legacies until the dust has settled.