By: Sean Crose
On Saturday in Saudi Arabia, WBC, WBA, and WBO heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk put an end to a theory that was once on the verge of becoming accepted fact: that the heavyweight division was now the exclusive realm of fighters six and half feet tall (6’5 at a minimum) or over. Great heavyweights of the past, like Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis, simply wouldn’t have been able to defeat titans like Wladimir Klitschko, Tyson Fury, Anthony Joshua and others. Or so the argument went. And then along came Usyk.
By besting the 6’9 former titlist Tyson Fury for the second time this past weekend, the 6’3 Usyk proved that traditional sized heavyweights could indeed still rule supreme over the division. It wasn’t all that long ago that the question of heavyweight domination in the post Wladimir Klitschko era had come down to a contest between three people: Fury, Joshua, and the explosively powerful…
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