In a perfect world, we'd be 24 hours away from watching Tyson Fury and Olkesandr Usyk do battle for the undisputed heavyweight championship. An undisputed heavyweight title fight has become an extraordinarily rare event in boxing. It's never occurred in the four-belt era and it's been nearly a quarter of a century since it occurred at all. On Nov. 13, 1999 at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Lennox Lewis defeated Evander Holyfield to claim the undisputed belt.
The title was fractured when Lewis chose to fight Michael Grant, his WBC mandatory challenger, in his next bout rather than WBA mandatory John Ruiz. Ruiz went to court to enforce his right, won, and Lewis was stripped.
We haven't had one man hold all of the belts since.
For the longest time, it appeared we'd finally get that on Saturday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Thanks to the money that the Saudi government has been willing to spend on boxing, Fury and Usyk signed to meet on Saturday for all four belts as well as in a rematch.
"It’s been 24 years since we’ve last had an undisputed heavyweight world champion," Fury said at a Nov. 16 news conference in London. "And we know that the Klitschkos were champions for about 10 years. So there’s been another 14 years where other heavyweights couldn’t stop it. So we’ve been chosen. And I believe we’re both destined to be here. And there’s only one winner: I’m destined to become undisputed champion."
Destiny, as it were, has been delayed under May 17. Fury suffered a gnarly cut in training that forced postponement of the fight which spawned a raft of utterly ridiculous rumors that he'd somehow cut himself in order to avoid the bout.
Given that's he's going to make close to $100 million for the effort, it's most likely he would have fought with an amputated arm, if he'd been allowed.
That said, there is an old adage about the heavyweights which applies here: As the heavyweights go, so goes boxing. Even in the sport's heyday, when it was one of the three most popular sports in the U.S. along with baseball and horse racing, the interest in the sport was always a bit greater with a vibrant and competitive heavyweight division.
That all begins with one man at the top of the mountain that others chase.
Contrary to popular belief, the sport is not in a death spiral. Oh, it's got its issues -- lots and lots and lots of issues -- and most of it is fueled by the lack of leadership. Boxing is a worldwide sport without a league and no commissioner. Rules are different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. There is no one with the best interests of boxing in charge who makes decisions. Fighters win championships in the ring and lose them in board rooms. There is no regular drug testing in place. There is no unified ranking system.
We could go on and on, but you get the point.
Things are starting to change, though, and there are a lot of elite fighters in the sport who are well worth your time and money. Naoya Inoue and Terence Crawford immediately spring to mind, but there are plenty more.
Boxing has a rabid hard-core base, but that hard-core base is very small, minuscule when compared to the hard-core fan bases of, say, football, soccer, basketball, baseball and, yes, MMA.
And a sport isn't going to be successful with a tiny hard-core fan base. There is a large group of very casual fans who might not watch the preliminaries, who aren't even all that interested in most fights but who will show up when a big fight turns into an event. And most of them love heavyweights.
So, if you have one man whom people can name who, theoretically, sits atop the sport, it can help build interest in the sport as a whole.
We'll have to wait until May 17 as Fury's cut heals. Frankly, that date sounds optimistic given how bad that cut appeared. Something like that generally needs around 90 days to heal, and then Fury would need to get back into training. So they've taken an aggressive approach and hopefully, it doesn't backfire.
They'll fight, eventually. Until then, we as boxing fans will muddle through, as we always do.
It's a dream that on May 18, we'll have one guy as heavyweight champion. It will be either a 6-9 Englishman who has no losses and one draw and is a charismatic, charmer or a low-key Ukrainian with a perfect record and undisputed titles in two weight classes.
Either way, it's going to be a great day for boxing when it arrives.
Let's just make sure it does ... please.
Pretty please!