Six of Ring Magazine’s top six heavyweights in their top 10 rankings will be fighting this Saturday night, December 23rd on the PPV card at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
After Saturday night, there’s a good chance that Deontay Wilder or Anthony Joshua will be the new King in the Ring Magazine ratings. If both win in their respective bouts, it’ll come down to which shined the brightest.
Ring Magazine heavyweight listing
King: Oleksandr Usyk
1. Tyson Fury
2. Deontay Wilder
3. Anthony Joshua
4. Zhilei Zhang
5. Joseph Parker
6. Filip Hrgovic
7. Jared Anderson
8. Joe Joyce
9. Frank Sanchez
10. Otto Wallin
Joshua will probably lose his fight against Otto Wallin (26-1, 14 KOs) this Saturday, so he’ll be removed from the equation. AJ just looks mentally gone, null & void, and vacant.
The real talent kept off the list
Interestingly, the heavyweight with the most talent and the best chance of stealing the show this Saturday on the ‘Day of Reckoning’ card, Arslanbek Makhmudov, isn’t in Ring Magazine’s top 10, and he’s someone who would whip the brakes off ANY of the fighters on the card as well the entire list.
Does anyone who knows about the sport think Joseph Parker, Joshua, Wilder, Frank Sanchez, or Wallin could beat Makhmudov? It’s mind-boggling that Ring Magazine doesn’t have Makhmudov (18-0, 17 KOs) on its top ten list.
Makhmudov is fighting unbeaten Agit Kabayel (23-0, 15 KOs) on Saturday night in a ten round contest. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter how good Makhmudov looks, he’s not going to be moved to the King spot or the #1 position in the Ring Magazine’s rankings, which is just another reason why the list is useless and beyond terrible.
You could insert him in place of many of the fluff heavyweights on their top ten list, and it would make sense because it’s a truly horrible list, especially at the top with the old guys.
Although Ring Magazine’s ‘King’ Oleksandr Usyk and the #1 guy below him, Tyson Fury, aren’t taking part in Saturday’s ‘Day of Reckoning’ card, they could be replaced anyway by the fighters taking part in this event. Those old guys don’t belong on the list, period.
Fury doesn’t belong at the #1 spot after his last performance against Francis Ngannou, getting dropped and dominated. At this point in Fury’s career, he just looks like a fat, middle-aged rich guy who is being propped up by his promoters by weak match-making and lucky scoring.
The 35-year-old Fury should be at rock bottom of the Ring Magazine’s top ten heavyweight list because the only guy he can beat from that list is his good friend Joseph Parker, a fighter who has been feasting on a diet of horrendously poor opposition since he was whipped by Joe Joyce last year.
Few boxing fans rate the 37-year-old Usyk as the King after he was arguably knocked out in the fifth round by Daniel Dubois last August.
Any way you look at that fight, from the great acting job by Usyk, feigning that he’d been hit low, to the blown call by the referee, saying it was a shot below the belt, it’s disturbing.
