On May 18, 2024, hitherto unbeaten Ukranian Oleksandr Usyk beat Tyson Fury, by split decision, at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to add the WBC world heavyweight to his WBA, WBO and IBF titles. In so doing, he became the first undisputed world heavyweight champion since April 12, 2000 and the first heavyweight to hold all four major world titles since the start of the ‘four-belt era’. Usyk vacated his IBF belt just five weeks later, but the man they call ‘The Cat’ remains the number one ranked heavyweight in the world with all the sanctioning bodies, bar the IBF.
An gold medallist in the heavyweight division at the 2011 AIBA World Boxing Championships in Baku, Azerbaijan and the 2012 Summer Olympics in London as an amateur, Usyk turned professional in 2013 and quickly made a name for himself in the crusierweight weight class. Indeed, he claimed his first world title, the WBO world cruiserweight title, by virtue of a unanimous decision over Krzysztof Glowacki at the Ergo Arena in Gdansk, Poland on September 17, 2016. On July 21, 2018, in his fifteenth professional fight, he beat Armenian Murat Gassiev, again by unanimous decision, at Olimpiyskiy, Moscow to become undisputed world cruiserweight champion.
In the aftermath of the his next fight, a successful defence of all four major cruiserweight titles against Englishman Tony Bellew at the Manchester Arena on November 10, 2018, co-promoter Alexander Krassyk said, ‘Usyk definitely needs to fight Anthony Joshua.’ Having vacated all his cruiserweight titles in 2019, to move up to the heavyweight division, that is, in fact, what Usyk did eventually. On September 25, 2021, at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, he beat the unified world heavyweight champion, by unanimous decision, to win the IBF, IBO and WBO heavyweight titles, plus the WBA super heavyweight title. He successfully defended those titles in a rematch at the Jedda Superdome the following August and, courtesy of the aforementioned victory ove Tyson Fury, subsequently became undisputed world champion in a second weight class.
