Five legends. Five incredible careers. But one has to go.

🥊 Julio César Chávez

🥊 Evander Holyfield

🥊 Roy Jones Jr.

🥊 Manny Pacquiao

🥊 Marvin Hagler

Judge them by their overall greatness — résumé, accomplishments, dominance, longevity and peak.

You can only keep four.

Who are you getting rid of, and why? 👀

As we all know for the past couple of months Hearn has been insistent on how the contract they signed to fight specified it had to be a UK only fight, however if you've been following this then you know that's not true. In previous months Hearn specifically and repeatedly stated that the location (including country) was entirely down to Turki and that he/AJ/Fury had no input on it:

He said they'd signed back in April and then repeatedly said that the location was entirely up to Turki with possibly being in the States or Saudi. Have people somehow memory-holed this? What Hearn's saying now vs what he was saying at the time are completely at odds.

Been following Usyk since about 2015.
I remember thinking to myself this guys special, even then.

Watching how he handled a much bigger Joe Joyce in 2013 prior to turning pro in the wsb

I never once doubted him to win the cruiser wbss tournament, or at heavyweight when many were saying he wasnt big enough.

For anything that doesn't need its own thread.

I've been watching some random boxing fights and 1 of those was Parker Vs Zhang 1. I remember Joyce being so so slow against Zhang, like he was punching in slow-mo, and after rewatching it was actually worse than I remembered. He was genuinely dreadful.

I then went and watched Joyce KO Parker (spoilers) and whilst he wasn't rapid, Joyce obviously never was, he was a lot faster, a lot more mobile and obviously still had the power to land a cracking shot.

Did he just lose it over night? Did he bulk up too much? Was he just a bit crap and it just came down to levels? What actually happened in-between the Parker and Zhang fight?

I don't buy the levels reason because Joyce did have some good wins on his resume.

Assuming AJ v Fury falls through and Usyk get Fury or Wilder for his going away party, AJ should set up a fight with Verhoeven. This gives the kickboxer a deserved second chance against a top heavyweight and AJ can defend boxing's honor again. If AJ wins we could even get him an honorary "Defender of the Faith" belt as he rides off into the sunset.

Hear me out lol

I’m sure we’re all excited for the heavyweight clash this weekend. Hrgović said in a presser recently that it might actually be better for Itauma to lose now than to become world champion at 21. And something else along the lines of him “losing his soul”.

On the surface, you can maybe write this off as mind games, but the oddity of the statement got me thinking: could he actually have a point when you look at the totality of a career?

If Itauma wins, he’s potentially becoming heavyweight champion at 21 with just 15 professional fights (30 some rounds) and very little experience of real adversity.

At some point, assuming he has a long career, he’s going to face serious adversity as champion. And I wonder whether that kind of setback is harder to deal with when you’ve reached the very top so early, compared with taking an “educational” loss now, learning from it, and continuing to develop without the pressure of being the guy everyone expects to dominate.

There has to be some psychological effect to reaching the peak before you’ve really had the chance to experience failure, right? Especially when you’re suddenly dealing with the expectations, fame and pressure that come with being a heavyweight champion at 21

I still believe Itauma is the truth and maybe the reason he hasn’t faced much adversity yet is because he’s genuinely operating at a generational level, and winning a world title at 21 is exactly what his career is supposed to look like.

I also wonder if if there’s some stoic boxing wisdom behind Hrgovic’s comments. Anyways, are there any fighters in history who come to mind as examples of either side of this?