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Fury, Usyk, Wilder or Joshua: who is the greatest heavyweight of this era?

3 November 2026 · Boxers

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For ten years the heavyweight division has been built around four men: Tyson Fury, Oleksandr Usyk, Deontay Wilder and Anthony Joshua. They held almost every title between them, fought each other in some of the biggest nights the sport has seen this century, and their fans still argue about who was the best of them. On GOATvs the argument is settled the only way the site knows: one face-off at a time, by everyone. The box above shows where the four stand today in the world's list of the greatest boxers of all time.

In the ring, the answer looks simple. Oleksandr Usyk won Olympic gold in London in 2012, became undisputed cruiserweight champion in 2018, then moved up. He beat Anthony Joshua twice, in London in 2021 and in Jeddah in 2022, and in May 2024 he beat Tyson Fury in Riyadh on a split decision to become the first undisputed heavyweight champion since Lennox Lewis in 1999. He beat Fury again that December, this time on all three cards, and in July 2025 knocked out Daniel Dubois at Wembley to become undisputed for a second time. He has not lost as a professional.

The world's ranking does not simply copy those results. At the time of writing it puts Deontay Wilder, the one man of the four who never fought Usyk, above all three. Wilder held the WBC title from 2015 to 2020 and defended it ten times, almost always by knockout, and his right hand made him one of the most watched heavyweights of his generation. Fury, the man who took that title from him, sits lower than both.

That is the strange part, because Fury's record against the others is the best story of the era. In 2015 he travelled to Düsseldorf and outpointed Wladimir Klitschko, who had ruled the division for nearly a decade. He then stepped away from boxing for more than two years, came back, and fought Wilder three times: a draw in Los Angeles in 2018, a stoppage win in Las Vegas in 2020, and a knockout in the eleventh round of their third fight in 2021, one of the great heavyweight fights of the century. Put Fury next to Wilder on GOATvs and it is one of the closest calls on the list.

Joshua's place is a story of its own. Olympic champion at the same London Games as Usyk, he filled Wembley with 90,000 people to beat Klitschko in 2017, then lost his titles to the late replacement Andy Ruiz Jr. at Madison Square Garden in 2019 and won them back six months later in Saudi Arabia. Fury and Joshua, Britain's two biggest heavyweights, never met in the ring. On GOATvs that fight finally happens, and it is about as close as a vote can be.

None of the four is near the very top of the list. That belongs to the old names: Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Mike Tyson. Whether Usyk's unbeaten run will one day lift him into that company is up to the people who vote. You can follow all the heavyweights in one place on our list of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time.

Vote: Oleksandr Usyk vs Tyson Fury

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