The heavyweight division is tingling with excitement and fueling a resurgence of interest in boxing overall

The old adage that says, "As go the heavyweights, so goes boxing," may never have been more true than it is now, with elite heavyweight activity driving a surge of interest in the sport.

There are a slew of elite heavyweights now with several interesting prospects on the rise. The heavyweight division is more healthy now than it has been at any time in the last 20 years, perhaps more. Four of them will be on display during the "5 versus 5" card at Kingdom Arena Saturday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

In 1994, four of the five heavyweights ranked by The Ring magazine in its annual ratings went on to be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Five of the Top 10 in that year made it, and those five don't include perhaps the two most prominent: Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield. Neither was ranked in The Ring's Top 10 in 1994, with Tyson still in prison and Holyfield having lost to Michael Moorer and facing questions about his health. There were other good heavyweights, limit Ray Mercer, Shannon Briggs, Tommy Morrison, David Tua and Ike Ibeabuchi competing then.

Among active fighters, Usyk, Fury and Joshua are locks for the Hall of Fame. None of the others have done near enough, but they still have time left in their careers to win fights and put themselves into position. Parker, for instance, has losses to Anthony Joshua, Joe Joyce and Dillian Whyte. He has quality wins over Zhilei Zhang, Deontay Wilder and Andy Ruiz. If he gets a few more wins of that ilk, he could make it.

A young fighter like Daniel Dubois, who fights Filip Hrgovic in the co-main event on Saturday, still has plenty of time to accumulate the wins it will take to make it. And then there are young fighters like Moses Itauma, Jared Anderson and Richard Torrez Jr. who have basically their entire careers ahead of him.

What makes it all work is that they're fighting each other. Of the elite heavyweights, Fury has already faced Wilder three times and Wladimir Klitschko and Usyk once each, with a rematch against Usyk set for Dec. 21. Usyk has fought Joshua twice, Fury and Dubois and has the rematch with Fury scheduled. Wilder has three fights with Fury and another against Parker. And Joshua has the two fights with Usyk, a fight with Parker and a fight with Klitschko on his resume.

Joshua is likely to fight the better positioned out of the Dubois-Hrgovic winner and the Wilder-Zhang winner, with Parker likely to face one of the losers.

So let's play this out a bit and see what we might have to look forward to on Dec. 21 as an early Christmas gift. Let's say Wilder knocks out Zhang, and Dubois beats Hrgovic. Then, we could have Usyk-Fury for the undisputed title as the main event, with Joshua-Wilder as the co-main and Parker versus Dubois. Each one of those fights would then feature a man who held a version of the heavyweight title at some point on both sides. And for kicks, we could then add in a Hrgovic-Zhang rematch in that scenario.

The possibilities are endless, and the most common complaint that the non-boxing public has about the sport -- I don't know who these guys are -- will be taken away. Because under the leadership of Turki Alalshikh, the chairman of Saudi Arabia's General Entertainment Authority, money is not an issue in getting important fights made, the best matches are made. The fighters are building their profiles and their legacies and contributing to a rebirth in the sport.

I love what is happening in boxing now. Undisputed super bantamweight champion Naoya Inoue is an all-time great already with the promise of much more to come. Terence Crawford won the undisputed titles at super lightweight and welterweight, seems poised to do it again at super welterweight and could be headed toward a showdown with undisputed super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez.

There are plenty of great young fighters on the rise, and if they're managed and moved properly, they'll become stars, too.

The heavyweights, though, are the ones fueling this interest and resurgence. 

All I can say is, keep it going, guys.