Evander Holyfield believes there is just one active fighter that he would have struggled to defeat at his very best.
‘The Real Deal’ established himself in the paid ranks back in 1984, just months after he walked away from the Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles with a light heavyweight bronze medal.
His first significant achievement came in April of 1988 when he stopped Carlos De Leon in the eighth round of their Las Vegas showdown to become the undisputed world cruiserweight champion.
Holyfield would go on to capture the undisputed heavyweight championship just two years later with a victory over James ‘Buster’ Douglas, becoming the first fighter in boxing history to accomplish this feat at cruiserweight and heavyweight.
Speaking to Boxing Social, ‘The Real Deal’ spoke fondly of Ukrainian superstar Oleksandr Usyk as he claims it would have been ‘difficult’ for him to defeat the pound-for-pound great.
“He’s a boxer too and it’d probably have been difficult for me because my whole thing is that I was real good with guys that were bullies, guys that were aggressive. I handled very aggressive fighters real well, it’s just boxers.
I was a boxer, so I could beat them cause they fought my game-plan. If you ever want to know a guy that would give this guy a problem, find somebody just like him. People who weren’t aggressive were difficult.”
Usyk became the only fighter since Holyfield to achieve undisputed status at cruiserweight and heavyweight back in May of 2024 when he handed Tyson Fury the first defeat of his professional career.
The 39-year-old Ukrainian has since vacated all four of his heavyweight titles and was last in action earlier this year when he weathered an early storm to eventually defeat kickboxing great Rico Verhoeven.
