Not every fight can be for a championship. Not every bout can be an instant classic. The bar can’t always be that high. The great majority of the time, the goals when arranging a boxing match are modest: to get everyone involved paid, to give fans a modicum of entertainment, and to provide some tiny advancement in the way of clarity in the sport.
In the heavyweight division, this past weekend was a successful one on the clarity front, even if that forward progress was of the baby-step variety.
We had Filip Hrgovic conclusively outpointing Joe Joyce, Richard Torrez Jnr doing the same against Guido Vianello, Bakhodir Jalolov going the distance for the first time and winning a decision over Ihor Shevadzutskyi, David Adeleye stopping Jeamie Tshikeva in a reminder to boxers everywhere to protect themselves at all times, and Delicious Orie winning by a 40-36 score in his pro debut.
The degrees of clarity achieved varied from fight to fight, but certainly we know a bit more now about the sub-championship tier of the 2025 heavyweight division than we did a week ago.
And we can in turn make slightly more informed educated guesses than we could a week ago about what the future of the championship tier of the heavyweight division may look like.
For the purposes of a thought experiment with greater specificity: We can now make better projections about how the heavyweight rankings, circa 2030, will look.
Let’s dive right in at the deep end and double back afterward for explanations. Here is one man’s best guess for what the heavyweight rankings five years from today, on April 8, 2030 – yes, I’m plowing ahead under the shaky assumption that humanity makes it another five years – could look like, including current records, current ages, and those ages plus five:
I’ll begin the analysis with what may seem like a massive asterisk, but actually is only a small asterisk: What about fighters we don’t know about yet, who haven’t turned pro yet?
It’s a fair question in theory, but heavyweight is the one division in which boxers usually develop slowly enough that, if you haven’t turned pro yet in 2025, you probably won’t be in the top 10 in 2030.
In the current Transnational Boxing Rankings Board top 10 at heavyweight, for example, there isn’t a single fighter listed who wasn’t a pro by 2020. There are a couple who weren’t on everyone’s radar yet in 2020 – like Agit Kabayel and Martin Bakole – but it’s rare at heavyweight to go from a complete unknown to a true top-10 contender inside five years. So I’m not overly worried that the above list will get blown up by someone who’s currently 16 or 17 years old and bound for a Mike Tyson-like ascent.
The next topic to address is the lengthy list of fighters currently in the heavyweight title picture who, based on age and possibly other factors, aren’t likely to be in the top 10 – if they’re active at all – in 2030.
Five years from now, Oleksandr Usyk will be 43, Tyson Fury 41, Anthony Joshua 40, Deontay Wilder 44, Zhilei Zhang 46, Andy Ruiz 40, Derek Chisora 46, and Dillian Whyte 41.
Maybe one or two of them will still be fighting. (It’s boxing, after all. Oliver McCall just fought two months ago. You can’t rule it out.) But I feel confident predicting most of the above will be retired and none of them will be in the title picture.
Perhaps a hair more controversially, I’ve left out Joseph Parker, who will be 38 in 2030; Bakole, who will also be 38; and Jared Anderson, who will be just 30.
Parker is on a tremendous roll, but he’s logged 252 professional rounds across 13 years as a pro, and the odds are against him having five more good years in him. Bakole figures to have more miles remaining on his warranty, but given our last image of him (against Parker), projecting him for the top of the division five years from now feels optimistic. And given Anderson’s recent loss (against Bakole), his dreary comeback performance, his heart seemingly not being in this sport, and his promises to retire young, he’s an easy one to disqualify.
But enough about what the top of the heavyweight class won’t look like as the ’30s begin. Let’s focus on what it will look like.
For starters, if the above projected top 10 becomes reality, it will be the most southpaw-overrun heavyweight division of our lifetimes. Five boxers in my future top 10 – including four in my top five – box with their right shoulder forward: Moses Itauma, Jalolov, Torrez, Dainier Pero (even though BoxRec lists him as orthodox), and Opetaia.
It will also be well-stocked with super heavyweights from the 2020 Olympics (which, you may recall, didn’t take place until 2021). Jalolov won gold, Torrez somewhat unexpectedly took silver, and Pero fell to Torrez in the quarterfinals. Also, Justis Huni was set to represent Australia at those Tokyo Olympics, but he dropped out about a month before the Games began with a hand injury.
Is it a leap to project Itauma as the top dog in the division when the best opponents he’s defeated so far are Demsey McKean and ancient Mariusz Wach – a man who turned pro just four months after Itauma was born? Perhaps. But also… have you watched Itauma?
Limited opposition acknowledged, the British southpaw seems to have the complete package. His hands are ridiculously fast for a heavyweight. He throws an effective jab. He utilizes good head movement. His athleticism is obvious. And he’s a two-fisted puncher – I’m not sure which is better between his right hook and his overhand left.
None of Itauma’s last seven opponents have gotten out of the second round. If you’re going to beat up on the McKeans and the Wachs of the world, you may as well really beat up on them, and Itauma did. Granted, there’s much we don’t know – such as how he’ll hold up when he takes one on the chin. But based on pure upside, Itauma looks like the future of this division.
That doesn’t mean, however, that it’s safe to assume he’ll be better in five years than a guy like Dubois, who is a major part of the present of the division. Dubois, unlike Itauma, is a known quantity.
Don’t take that to mean, though, that Dubois is a sure thing to be in the top 10 in five years. He’s undeniably talented and is red hot right now (off back-to-back-to-back KOs of Jarrell Miller, Hrgovic and Joshua), but he’s also been stopped twice. His range of outcomes spans anywhere from “loses to Usyk again soon and quickly flames out” to “rules the heavyweight division from now until 2035.”
Speaking of a wide range of outcomes, we have Jalolov’s name in-between Itauma and Dubois on this hypothetical list. “The Big Uzbek” may prove the answer to the question “What if Vitali Klitschko was a southpaw?” Or he may prove the answer to the question “What if David Price was a southpaw?”
Jalolov is 6-foot-7, fights tall and with plenty of power in his left hand, and won the last two super heavyweight gold medals in the Olympics. He also hasn’t stepped up yet after seven years as a pro and looked awfully flat last weekend against Shevadzutskyi, who had me Googling how to say “Butterbean” in Ukrainian. (The answer is “Maslyanka.”)
Based on his dimensions and physical gifts, chances are Jalolov is in the title picture for most of his 30s – but like most of the men on my list, we have more questions than answers right now.
That’s certainly the case for Jalolov’s fellow 2020 southpaw Olympians, Torrez and Pero.
The marketable American Torrez has our collective attention, especially after proving a little something against Vianello. He’s a big dude at 6-foot-2 and 230lbs, yet he’s positively dwarfed by most of his opponents. He has a unique style whereby he’s willing to wrestle and muck it up, but he can also punch. And from the neck up, he looks like he should be teaching Sweathogs, not punching trial horses.
Pero is less eye-catching but checks more traditional boxes: Cuban amateur background, elite trainer in Bob Santos, a well-proportioned 6-foot-5 and 235lbs. But he hasn’t done anything of note yet as a pro. (Pero's older brother, Lenier, is 11-0 with 8 KOs and hasn't fought in more than a year but recently signed with Matchroom Boxing. He will be 37 years old when 2030 begins.)
Huni, the Australian almost-Olympian, is also unproven as a pro. But the upside sure is there: He’s fluid with extremely fast hands (not quite Itauma-fast, but not far off), a tremendously exciting heavyweight who isn’t shy about launching left hooks to the body.
On the plus side, Huni showed big-time heart and resilience against Kevin Lerena last year, nearly getting KO’d in the 10th round but somehow staying on his feet and getting through it to win a decision. On the minus side, he needed to show big-time heart and resilience against Kevin Lerena.
The rest of my future top 10 is made up of fighters who’ve proven more than any of those 2020 Olympians.
Kabayel is currently a top contender, having stopped Zhang, Frank Sanchez and Arslanbek Makhmudov in his last three, and there’s every reason to expect him to remain a top contender for several more years.
Hrgovic also has a win over Zhang (if a far less convincing one), just added the faded Joyce to his resume, and has only been beaten by Dubois.
Wardley is clearing out all the middling Brits, with an emphatic KO1 over Olympian Frazer Clarke and a dominant KO 7 over Adeleye. He’ll soon be the youngest fighter in a just-announced four-man box-off with Kubrat Pulev, Michael Hunter and Jarrell Miller. Wardley seems versatile – able to box tactically at times, but prone to extreme, wild aggression at others.
Opetaia, another southpaw, is the most proven fighter on the whole list – just not at heavyweight. The 6-foot-2 Aussie is the lineal cruiserweight champion, and he says he wants a shot at Usyk. Whether that’s coming his way or not, Opetaia has the frame to compete at heavyweight and surely will try once he’s bored enough at the 200-pound limit.
There are several other 20-something fighters outside this highly unscientific top 10 who’ve shown potential.
The 27-year-old Orie made a disappointing first-round exit in the Paris Olympics, and he looked in his pro debut like a one-note fighter who couldn’t or wouldn’t do much besides step in and throw the 1-2 – but the athleticism is obvious, and it typically takes some talent to make the Olympics for England.
The 25-year-old Lazizbek Mullojonov of Uzbekistan – yet another southpaw – won gold at heavyweight (as in the division below super heavyweight) in Paris and has been fighting in the 230s as a pro.
Poland’s Kacper Meyna, also 25, is absurdly aggressive and is making it work in his favor against C-level opposition.
The 27-year-old Teremoana Jnr lost to Jalolov in the quarterfinals of the 2024 Olympics representing Australia, and is worryingly easy to hit, but he also does damage when he’s doing the hitting, as seven KO wins inside two rounds in seven tries can attest.
And let’s not forget Efe Ajagba, just outside the “20-something” crowd at age 30, just outside my speculative top 10 at age 35, but a steady, improving fighter who can’t be discounted as a potential contender for the next several years.
2030 is a long way away – precisely as far away now as the short-lived empty-arena sports era of 2020, which feels like it happened several lifetimes ago.
But as a semi-sane man once said, time is a flat circle. Richard Torrez Jnr contending 50 years after Scott LeDoux’s prime is proof of that.
Is the top 10 list in this article an accurate glimpse of the future? That’s highly doubtful. But the bar doesn’t have to be that high. As long as it’s a quality jumping-off point for discussions of the heavyweight division’s future, it’s doing its job.
Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.
.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
