The heavyweight division saw two fights announced this week, with Anthony Joshua facing Dillian Whyte at the O2 in London on August 12 and Oleksandr Usyk defending his unified titles against Daniel Dubois two weeks later.
With the rest of boxing's weight classes offering blockbusters — with the likes of Gervonta Davis vs. Ryan Garcia and Devin Haney vs. Vasiliy Lomachenko earlier this year, the upcoming mega-fight between Errol Spence Jr. and Terence Crawford, a super showdown between Naoya Inoue and Stephen Fulton, and a battle of undisputed champions when Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez takes on Jermell Charlo — 2023 has been shaping up to be a fantastic year for the sport.
And then we got this.
Joshua-Whyte and Usyk-Dubois are fine but nobody asked to see either fight. Joshua stopped Whyte back in 2015 and the boxing public — certainly outside the UK — has not been banging at the door for a rematch in 2023. What people wanted was a massive bout between Joshua and Deontay Wilder or a domestic battle between Joshua and Tyson Fury.
While there are rumors that the fight with Wilder could happen in Saudi Arabia later this year, they are just rumors. So we’re stuck with a fight that doesn’t quite generate the interest of fight fans.
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At least Usyk-Dubois is a fresh matchup, right? Well, it is, but absolutely nobody wants that fight this year either. Dubois has bounced back nicely after being stopped in the 10th round by Joe Joyce in 2020, with four consecutive knockout victories.
However, the opposition has been lacking and the names Kevin Larena, Trevor Bryan, Joe Cusumano and Bogdan Dinu don’t necessarily scream the type of wins that make you a title contender, do they?
The heavyweight division has been kind of a letdown over the past year and these two fight announcements are byproducts of that. And do you know who is at fault for all of this?
Tyson Fury.
How does the blame lay squarely on Fury’s shoulders? Because he’s holding the entire division up with his actions. The current WBC heavyweight champion has put the division in a holding pattern with his lack of commitment when it comes to his next fight.
Ever since he defeated Deontay Wilder in an epic third encounter back in October 2021, Fury’s moves have been impossible to understand. First, he announced his retirement after knocking out Dillian Whyte in a mandatory defense, and then he pulled the bait and switch with Anthony Joshua several times over before settling on another fight nobody wanted with Derek Chisora at the end of 2022.
And the moves only have been more bizarre since then.
Instead of an undisputed heavyweight championship showdown with fellow titleholder Usyk, Fury has done everything but give the fans what they want. He teased a boxing match with former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou and when that didn’t materialize, he started rattling off names of heavyweights nobody cared about.
Meanwhile, the Usyk and Fury camps have been going back and forth in a social media war of words. After the Ukrainian called Fury's bluff on an infamous 70-30 purse split, verbally accepting the much smaller share despite his unified status, the Brit looked elsewhere.
The two fights he should be taking, against Joshua and Usyk, are those that Fury is seemingly uninterested in making. Joshua has since pivoted to an old rival in Whyte and possibly a winter date with Wilder, while Usyk scrambled to find an opponent to stay busy.
The 25-year-old Dubois had his name called as the holder of the WBA (Regular) heavyweight champion. Ultimately, Dubois may have bitten off more than he can chew against arguably the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world today and Whyte clearly isn’t the same fighter he was when he first met Joshua.
As the rest of the boxing world has a banner year with one blockbuster fight after another, the heavyweight division continues to fail us. Maybe things will change but it all hinges on what Tyson Fury decides to do next.
Until then, we are just going to have to deal with getting a bunch of heavyweight fights that we didn't ask for.