No matter who wins the important heavyweight fight at Wembley Stadium on Sept. 21 in London between Daniel Dubois and former unified champion Anthony Joshua, let there be no dispute: Oleksandr Usyk is the heavyweight champion of the world.
Period. End of story.
Anyone else masquerading as a "heavyweight champion" is a fraud.
Usyk won the IBF, WBA and WBO heavyweight titles in the ring, by twice defeating Joshua. Then, he defended those belts against Dubois. And finally, he added the WBC belt when he defeated Tyson Fury in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on May 18.
Now, I often rail against boxing's sanctioning bodies, because they often create chaos in the sport.
That's not the case here, though. The IBF is following its rules, even though the rules are outdated and create issues.
And to be fair to IBF president Daryl Peoples, WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman, WBO president Paco Valcarcel and WBA president Gilberto Mendoza Jr., they're often faced with a thankless task when a fighter unifies the belts.
The belts need to be defended regularly, and on that point, all of us can agree. And each organization has its own rankings and thus, different challengers rise to the top to become the official contenders. Not every legitimate top-rated contender is the same. Some are talented and attractive from a business standpoint. Others are, well, we all remember Morrade Hakkar.
He somehow became the mandatory challenger for Bernard Hopkins at a time when Hopkins held the IBF-WBA-WBC middleweight belts. There were vastly more qualified opponents out there, but Hakkar got the title shot because Hopkins, rightly, didn't want to get stripped of his belt.
Mark Robinson/Matchroom
Former unified champion Anthony Joshua will face Daniel Dubois for the IBF heavyweight title belt on Sept. 21 in London.
Usyk voluntarily surrendered the IBF belt Tuesday because he would have been stripped of it. He's going to rematch Tyson Fury on Dec. 21 in Riyadh and, in my mind, it's still for the undisputed championship. Yes, the winner will only be recognized as the WBA-WBC-WBO champion, but in the minds of the public, there is no doubt.
The good part of this is that, thanks to the influx of Saudi Arabian money into boxing, many of the big stars are fighting more frequently. Joshua, for instance, will be fighting for the third time in 10 months and for the fifth time in 17 months when he meets Dubois on Sept. 21.
That's great for Joshua, who has earned generational money during this stretch. It's also good for Matchroom Sport, his promoter; and it's good for the sport of boxing. People want to see the stars, no matter the sport. Whether it was Floyd Mayweather in boxing or Conor McGregor in the UFC or Michael Jordan in the NBA or Tom Brady in the NFL, Tiger Woods on the PGA Tour or Caitlin Clark in the WNBA, fans turn out to watch the stars compete.
Joshua is not only one of the best fighters in the world, he's also one of its elite stars.
Dubois isn't at Joshua's level yet, but when he faces Joshua, it will be his fourth fight in 13 months, a span in which he fought Usyk and Filip Hrgovic in addition to Joshua.
Gone, for the time being, are the days when there was talk but no action toward getting Joshua and Deontay Wilder into the ring with each other. Had they fought at their peaks, it would have been a monumental event and could have been among the greatest heavyweight fights in history. Think of the Joshua-Wladimir Klitschko fight and you have an idea of what Joshua-Wilder might have been.
We'll never know, though, and hopefully those days and the attitude that spawned them are gone forever.
That's why I feel it's important that at least in my little chunk of the world, I recognize greatness. To me, Terence Crawford is still the undisputed welterweight champion, at least until Aug. 3 when he moves up to 154 to challenge Israil Madrimov. Canelo Alvarez is the undisputed super middleweight champion and Usyk is the undisputed heavyweight champion.
If Usyk defeats Fury on Dec. 21, then he should be required to defend it against the best available contender, which at this point looks like it'd be the Joshua-Dubois winner. If Fury wins, they'd be tied 1-1 and so a rubber match would make sense.
The bottom line, though, is important: Remember who won the belts in the ring.
There's no dispute about that.