Promoter Eddie Hearn says if Tyson Fury defeats Oleksandr Usyk and Anthony Joshua, he’ll go down as the greatest heavyweight or “our time,” which some fans would have a difficult time believing.
If you saw Fury’s controversial win over Francis Ngannou last October, that performance automatically rules him out as being the best heavyweight in this generation.
A Generation of Inconsistencies
This is a weak generation of heavyweights, consisting of fighters like Joshua, Deontay Wilder, Usyk, and Andy Ruiz Jr. What we’ve seen in this generation are a lot of uneven performances from those fighters, proving there is no true best.
We can’t say Fury is the best of our generation worldwide, but he’s best in the UK. You can give Fury that compliment, but that’s not saying much.
Undefeated, but Untested?
Moreover, many of the talented heavyweights have been avoided by Joshua and Fury, as neither has fought Zhilei Zhang, Jared Anderson, Filip Hrgovic or Martin Bakole.
You can’t call Fury the greatest heavyweight of our generation if he’s never fought Zhang, Hrgovic, Anderson, Bakole, and Daniel Dubois. It’s questionable whether Fury beats any of those guys at any point in his career, and we know Joshua would be vulnerable against them.
“I want Tyson Fury, a British boxer, to win that fight and go down as a real great. I’m pleased he’s taking that fight,” said Eddie Hearn to iFL TV about wanting Tyson Fury to defeat Oleksandr Usyk on February 17th.
“That is a fight [against Usyk] that will make him a great. Beating Klitschko was incredible, and beating Usyk for the undisputed, that leaves nothing to chance about being the great for our generation,” Hearn continued.
“Without His Excellency, this fight wouldn’t get made. If AJ beats Ngannou well, he’s got to beat AJ to be the greatest of our time of our generation. I get his argument as well. Usyk beat AJ twice, but styles make fights.
“If he becomes undisputed, it’s a massive achievement, but I would love to see him fight Anthony [Joshua], and I think the whole world would as well. If he does a job on Ngannou, I think he can beat Fury.
“But Fury proves me wrong every time, and that’s why I’m not going against him in this fight. Even after the Ngannou performance, I believe he’s going to win the fight,” said Hearn.
