With the unbeaten, previously undisputed champion next up, with a potential new Mike Tyson looming and the fight-of-the-year frontrunner only days behind us, now is the time to say it: The heavyweight division is all the way back.
This is not about debating the merits of past glorious eras – feel free to believe Ali-Foreman-Frazier were more talented than this crop.
Rather, this is an appreciation for how far this group of men have taken their sport and rejected the Klitschko-era theory that “all the great heavyweights are playing linebacker in the NFL.”
Saturday’s thrilling WBO title victory by return champion Daniel Dubois, overcoming two knockdowns to ruin the nose of previously unbeaten outgoing champion Fabio Wardley and stop him in the 11th round in Manchester, England, was so wondrous that aged promoter Frank Warren said it was the best card he ever staged.
It brought to mind my recently passed publicist friend Bill Caplan saying years ago that he ranked Tyson in the teens of all-time heavyweights because Tyson never confronted a knockdown or deep adversity to rally to victory.
“The great ones did,” Caplan said.
Against the popular Wardley, England’s Dubois did it twice in one night.
And when you factor in that two of his losses are to the three-belt active champion Oleksandr Usyk, and that he decked two-time champion Anthony Joshua four times before finishing him in the fifth round of their 2024 bout, that’s quite a player in this deep cast.
Warren revealed that if Wardley is not ready to return for an immediate rematch, the 21-year-old southpaw slugger from the U.K., Moses Itauma, will be ready for his close-up after knocking out 12 of his first 14 foes.
Itauma is the WBO’s No. 1 contender to Dubois, and he’s also No. 1 in the WBA to Usyk and secondary champion Murat Gassiev.
Usyk, 24-0 (15 KOs), is taking a deserved break from the action to resume his title run May 23 at the Pyramids of Giza versus kickboxer Rico Verhoeven.
The 39-year-old has also twice defeated Joshua and two-time champion Tyson Fury. This will be Usyk’s first fight since knocking out Dubois in July, and the 39-year-old has also expressed wanting to meet the other top champion of his era, recently victorious Deontay Wilder.
Warren, however, is pushing for Usyk to move to his WBC mandatory date with the unbeaten interim champion Agit Kabayel.
If there’s one player lacking from the script it’s an American.
However, 2021 Olympic silver medalist Richard Torrez Jnr, 26, has the opportunity to surge to the IBF’s top spot on the Pyramids of Giza card when he meets No. 3-ranked Frank Sanchez of Cuba.
In the meantime, the division’s biggest fight of all is so tantalizingly close by the end of 2026, with both Joshua and Fury on board to finally settle who’s the best U.K. heavyweight of all time.
The drama of that showdown was heightened this week with produced video footage of Usyk and Joshua training alongside each other as Joshua moves beyond the tragic car crash that killed two friends in December and eyes his greatest rival in the late fall.
In scenes drawn from the cinematic friendship between Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed, Usyk motivates Joshua as his next great bout hovers.
Both Joshua and Fury are slated to next take a stay busy fight. And while we just saw the danger of those with heavily favored light-heavyweight David Morrell getting stopped by Zak Chelli on the Manchester undercard, both should clear those obstacles.
Joshua, 29-4 (26 KOs), meets unranked Kristian Prenga, 20-1 (20 KOs), July 25 in Saudi Arabia, and Fury, fresh off his own post-”retirement” freshener, has yet to select his light touch.
Yet, that event will mark a celebration of how far the once dormant division has come since the night in 2017 when Joshua followed Fury’s own 2015 upset victory on the scorecards over Klitschko by stopping the Ukrainian in that unforgettable event at Wembley Stadium.
Now, once again, the heavyweights are the conversation starter in boxing, and after hearing for so long that the sport is only as good as its biggest division, you must admit it’s in a good place, then.
