Oleksandr Usyk doubts that Floyd Mayweather, Sugar Ray Leonard or even Sugar Ray Robinson would have been able to defeat a fellow all-time great.
Of the three, many would say that Robinson was the most accomplished, given his victories over 10 eventual Hall of Famers including Jake LaMotta and Randolph Turpin.
Robinson’s remarkable 199-fight career also underlines his longevity, with periods of dominance at welterweight and middleweight inspiring many to regard him as the sport’s greatest pound-for-pound fighter of all time.
Others, meanwhile, will argue that Leonard was the most complete fighter when it came to offensive and defensive prowess.
That he also defeated all three of his fellow Four Kings – Roberto Duran, Tommy Hearns and Marvin Hagler – makes it difficult to back any fighter to defeat a prime version of the American.
And the same, of course, could be said for Mayweather, who became a five-division world champion and retired after crafting an iconic record of 50-0.
But despite the extraordinary achievements of these three legends, Usyk has predicted that a prime Terence Crawford would have the beating of them all.
Speaking with Daily Mail Sport, the Ukrainian backed his fellow modern great who, like Mayweather, retired as an unbeaten five-weight world champion.
The announcement of his exit arrived last December, just a few months after he became a three-division undisputed king by dethroning Canelo Alvarez at 168lbs.
Prior to that, Crawford had consolidated his welterweight supremacy by scoring a surprisingly one-sided ninth-round stoppage over Errol Spence Jr in 2023, though many will continually argue that this was a compromised version of ‘The Truth’.
