Teddy Atlas believes there is just one fighter within the sport’s current era that will go down as one of the greatest ever.
Atlas worked with a number of great fighters during his years as a trainer, including the likes of former world heavyweight champion Michael Moorer, and former world light heavyweight champion Oleksandr Gvozdyk to name a few.
After moving away from his duties as a coach, Atlas stepped into the world of broadcasting where he has spent time working as an analyst and commentator for ESPN, HBO and Showtime, proving himself to be one of the ‘voices’ of the sport over the last three decades.
Speaking on his own YouTube podcast THE FIGHT, Atlas broke down his list of who he believes are the greatest fighters of all time, including the likes of Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard.
But when asked if he believes there is any fighter of the current era that could eventually make his list, he named none other than reigning unified world heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk, who has cemented himself as one of, if not the greatest fighter of his generation.
“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 has had a professional career that many fighters could only wish for. The Ukrainian superstar is just the second fighter in the history of boxing to capture the undisputed championship in the cruiserweight and heavyweight divisions, matched only by Evander Holyfield.
