Teddy Atlas has been asked about current fighters who might rank amongst the all-time greats.
Atlas is a former trainer turned analyst who worked with some of the best boxers of their time earlier in his career. He assisted Cus D’Amato’s training of then teenage protégé turned undisputed champion Mike Tyson before going on to work with Michael Moorer, who he guided to heavyweight world honours in 1994.
He also worked the corners of Barry McGuigan and trained Alexandr Povetkin, Timothy Bradley and Oleksandr Gvozdyk, so has been up close with some standout talents and is also a keen boxing historian.
Speaking on his own podcast, The Fight, Atlas named his all-time list and he included the likes of Sugar Ray Leonard, Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali.
Asked if there was anyone in the current era that could ever crack the list, he said only one current star, Oleksandr Usyk, had the potential – though it would still be tough.
“It would be pretty hard, the era is different. Usyk might be the only one, [Naoya] Inoue is great, [Terence] Crawford is great, but they’re not going to have an opportunity to go down the roads that these fighters went down, those roads and opportunities don’t exist any more, that era is gone. You have to go down some of those roads to get on this list.”
Usyk is one of the very few men to become undisputed in two divisions – cruiserweight and heavyweight – and remains unbeaten in his professional career.
The former Olympic Gold Medalist has twice beaten Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury and is now looking to achieve a historic feat by becoming a two-time undisputed champion in the heavyweight ranks.
To do so he will need to beat current IBF belt holder Daniel Dubois, but has also been mandated to fight WBO challenger Joseph Parker. The WBO will soon make a decision as to allowing the undisputed contest to take precedence.
