Let me tell you my Big Bang Theory. Not the sitcom, of course. I’ve never even walked past a TV playing it, let alone sat down to watch.
No, this is about Zhilei “Big Bang” Zhang, the massive Chinese heavyweight who, perhaps shockingly, has a shot Saturday on the big pay-per-view card in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to win an interim heavyweight title.
Look, before we go any further, I get it. It’s a bullshit title.
Oleksandr Usyk is the unified heavyweight champion and, by rights, the undisputed champion.
Usyk, Canelo Alvarez, and Terence Crawford each won undisputed championships in the ring by claiming the IBF, WBA, WBC, and WBO belts. Each was then forced to part with the IBF trinket because the sanctioning body demanded they face unworthy challengers. Usyk wanted to rematch Tyson Fury, and the price of doing so was surrendering the IBF belt.
But Usyk has been defending his belts. So why does boxing need an interim WBC title? It defies all logic. But this is boxing, and like Elvis, logic left the building long ago.
And yet, on Saturday, Zhang has a chance to call himself a heavyweight champion if he can get past the unbeaten Agit Kabayel.
At 6-foot-6 and 287.5 pounds, Zhang is bigger than the sides of beef Rocky Balboa battered in the original Rocky movie.
If you are expecting Chris Byrd, a lithe, nimble and defensively slick heavyweight, move on. Zhang is a plodder with pulverizing power and a granite chin.
Kabayel is 6-3 and weighed in Friday at 241 pounds, roughly the size of Steelers’ superstar T.J. Watt.
At the weigh-in, Kabayel was dwarfed by Zhang and had to crane his neck to look eye-to-eye with him. Zhang is so massive he makes Floyd Mayweather’s bodyguards look diminutive.
Zhang was born in the agricultural center of Zhoukou in southeast China, which is known for its Huai goats.
China is many things, but it’s not a boxing hotbed. Zhang previously held the WBO interim heavyweight title. Only three other world champions have come out of China: Xiong Zhao Zhong in 2012; Zou Shiming in 2016 and Xu Can in 2019.
Together, those three weighed about 320 pounds when they won their world titles, or only slightly more than Zhang weighed himself Friday.
Give Zhang a chance and you may like him. He’s 27-2-1, and he’s never going to the Hall of Fame. Nor will he win any awards for his boxing skill.
If you like Rock ’Em, Sock ’Em Robots, Zhang may be your guy.
His chin is sturdier than a Volvo. In his last five fights, he’s fought Joe Joyce twice, Filip Hrgovic, Joe Parker and Deontay Wilder, guys who go from good to great on the punch meter.
Zhang walked through their shots as if he were shooing a pesky fly.
Wilder is one of the most vicious punchers in heavyweight history. Zhang stopped him in the fifth on June 1, but Wilder didn’t leave so much as a dent in him.
Now, Wilder wasn’t the same guy he was earlier in his career when he was scarier than a furry spider on the bathroom floor.
Kabayel is 32 and has been around for a while, though few paid him much notice until he surgically executed Arslanbek Makhmudov. Makhmudov was 18-0 with 17 KOs when he fought Kabayel on Dec. 23, 2023, in Riyadh. Kabayel dropped him three times and ended it two minutes into the fourth.
That raised plenty of eyebrows. But then he obliterated Frank Sanchez, a highly regarded Cuban, and knocked him out in seven on May 18, and suddenly there was talk that we might be on to something with Kabayel.
Zhang, though, will be The Answer Man. Zhang might be best timed with a calendar, not a stopwatch. If Kabayel is going to handle him, he’ll need to stay in range and gamble that he can absorb what’s coming back — without taking a 10-second nap.
Boxing at its best is about hitting without getting hit. But against a thudding puncher like Zhang, a boxer needs to flip the script and focus on survival first.
One too many right hands from Zhang will leave anyone reconsidering their career choices.
Zhang’s choice to turn pro after winning silver at the 2008 Beijing Olympics instead of staying in China and taking a cushy gig that was available to him was a risk.
For dreamers, though, the safe route often isn’t the best one. Zhang believed he could be heavyweight champion, and he pursued his passion.
He has a chance for that bogus title on Saturday, but it’ll position him better for a shot at the real deal before too much longer.
Usyk only plans to fight twice more, so Zhang needs a sense of urgency. He needs to defeat Kabayel Saturday in a manner that has everyone talking about him at the water cooler on Monday, and not Parker or Artur Beterbiev or Dmitry Bivol or any of the other greats on Saturday’s card.
Beating Usyk is the only way to go from being a heavyweight champion to the heavyweight champion.
Delivering that big bang once again will make that change from a to the much closer to reality. Another big bang from Zhang keeps him on the path toward the only one that really matters.
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Zhilei Zhang stopped Deontay Wilder in June and took his punches with no issue.