Boxing: The Changing Shape of the Heavyweight Division

Editor’s note: The views and opinions expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sherdog.com, its affiliates and sponsors or its parent company, Evolve Media.

It has often been said that we fear those things we do not know, but there’s also a level of excitement that comes with unfamiliarity. So it is with boxing’s evolving heavyweight division, where a couple of mystery men from distant points at least offer the hope for something more than what United States fight fans have become accustomed to during an era that likely will never be known as a golden age for boxing’s big men.

Maybe large and lumbering Tyson Fury (25-0, 18 KOs), the British giant who holds the WBA “super,” WBO, IBO, The Ring magazine and lineal heavyweight championships, is better than many skeptics on this side of the Atlantic suspect. Maybe long, lean Deontay Wilder (36-0, 35 KOs), the WBC titlist who still is something of a question mark despite his near-perfect knockout ratio, will buff and polish his credentials as a legitimate champ when he takes on the dangerous Alexander Povetkin (30-1, 22 KOs) at a yet-to-be-determined date in Povetkin’s homeland of Russia. It also would not be wise to write off former long-reigning heavyweight king Wladimir Klitschko (64-4, 53 KOs) whenever the 40-year-old “Dr. Steelhammer” gets around to attempting to reverse his lackluster dethronement by Fury. Support is also building for 36-year-old Cuban southpaw Luis Ortiz (25-0, 22 KOs).

However, fight fans have seen enough of the aforementioned to harbor reservations as to whether any or all of them can rekindle a fire whose flame can best be described as flickering. Not all that long ago, they reveled in a time when the heavyweight scene was populated by such hall of fame-quality heavyweights as Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson, Riddick Bowe and George Foreman.

Which is why two young, relatively unproven prospects -- England’s Anthony Joshua (15-0, 15 KOs) and New Zealand’s Joseph Parker (18-0, 16 KOs) -- are being enthusiastically talked up as potential saviors of boxing’s erstwhile glamour division. Are they worthy of filling the large footprints left by Lewis, Holyfield, Tyson, Bowe and Foreman? Or are they overhyped creations of a global media, particularly in their home countries, that desperately wants to believe the young headliners bear the mark of greatness?

Whether Joshua and Parker are ready or not, we soon will find out whether they have what it takes to justify all the attention. Each or both could vault to the fringes of superstar status, perhaps even by the end of 2016; and the short-term end game could be a showdown between the two, which isn’t likely to be left simmering as long as, say, the long-delayed meeting of welterweight kings Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao, or even more irksome, the Tyson-Bowe and Lewis-Bowe clashes that never happened at all.

Joshua, the 26-year-old super heavyweight champion at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, will challenge another comparatively unknown commodity, IBF titlist Charles Martin (23-0-1, 21 KOs), on April 9 at the O2 Arena in London. Many of Joshua’s countrymen presume, perhaps incorrectly, it will be a quick and efficient coronation for the 6-foot-6 Brit, a 5½-to-1 favorite. Martin, 29, is widely considered to be something of a paper champion because he fought for and won the IBF belt that Fury was obliged to vacate by agreeing to the yet-to-be-scheduled rematch with Klitschko instead of fulfilling his mandatory title defense against Ukraine’s Vyacheslav Glazkov. Martin, a native of St. Louis now living in Carson, California, then got a virtual walkover in the Jan. 16 title bout at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, where Glazkov injured his right knee in the third round and was unable to continue.

However, Martin is the first southpaw Joshua will have faced as a pro, and the American is obviously confident enough in himself to make his first defense against a British Olympic champion who will be fighting at home before a large and supportive crowd.

Barry McGuigan, the former WBA featherweight champion and 2015 inductee into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, wonders whether Joshua is just a bit overanxious to bid for a world title, even a discounted one, after such limited professional experience.

“They’re taking a calculated risk,” McGuigan told Gareth A. Davies of The Telegraph when asked about Joshua’s eagerness to quickly snag the world title he considers to be his destiny. “If I were managing Joshua, I’d take the long haul. I’d give him another year of development at least. I’d put him in with other guys who can test him and then I would take a champion. He’s only 26. He’s still got loads of time.”

Yes, but exercising patience stands in conflict with the natural impetuousness of youth. Joshua might be taking a calculated risk against Martin, but he appears to be in prime position to mount the IBF throne. His next fight after that just might be a clear-the-decks faceoff with the heavyweight division’s other hot young gun, Parker, who tentatively is set to square off against 35-year-old Carlos Takam (33-2-1, 25 KOs), the France-based native of Cameroon, in an IBF title eliminator. If that bout gets made and if Parker wins it, he could be in line for a shot at the title that will either belong to Joshua or Martin.

“It’s make-or-break fight,” the 24-year-old Parker said of his negotiations to swap punches with Takam, the most accomplished fighter he will have faced to this point. “I know a lot of the boxing fans are excited about seeming me get tested. He possesses a lot of dangerous weapons as a fighter. It wouldn’t be smart for me to brawl with a brawler. I’m going to have to fight the smartest fight of my career.”

So there you have it. A lot of fight fans, at least those in the United States, don’t know much about Joshua (who has never fought in the U.S.) or Parker (who trains in Las Vegas and has fought just once in America), but they want to believe that they might be something special. With that said, daring to dream can lead to disappointment. Is Joshua really capable of becoming the U.K.’s next Lennox Lewis? Or is he the second coming of Audley Harrison, the super heavyweight champion at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney whose pro career never gained much traction? Is the 6-foot-4 Parker an improved version of New Zealand’s onetime heavyweight hope, David Tua, who was in in the title conversation for years but never could quite make it to the top of the mountain?

No question, the division that birthed such legends of the ring as Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Larry Holmes, George Foreman and 1990s headliners Lewis, Holyfield, Tyson and Bowe is in flux. It is not inconceivable that Fury or Wilder, or both, could eventually prove worthy of that mantle. Joshua and Parker are intriguing. However, there is a lingering suspicion that the division as presently constituted is eerily reminiscent of the “lost generation of heavyweights” of the 1980s, which was bookended by dominant champions Holmes and Tyson but otherwise filled in at the top by underachieving alphabet champions Tim Witherspoon, Greg Page, Trevor Berbick, Michael Dokes, John Tate, James “Bonecrusher” Smith, Pinklon Thomas and Tony Tubbs. Decide for yourself whether the current crop of supposedly elite big men -- Luis Ortiz, Kubrat Pulev, Bermane Stiverne, Bryant Jennings, Lucas Browne, David Haye and Ruslan Chagaev -- are better than their predecessors from 30 years ago, or even as good.

Bernard Fernandez, a five-term president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, received the Nat Fleischer Award from the BWAA in April 1999 for lifetime achievement and was inducted into the Pennsylvania Boxing Hall of Fame in 2005, as well as the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame in 2013. The New Orleans-born sports writer has worked in the industry since 1969 and pens a weekly column on the Sweet Science for Sherdog.com.