\u201cThe question that I frequently ask rhetorically is who’s the best American fighter and who’s the best American heavyweight?,\u201d Bruce Trampler, the long-time matchmaker for Top Rank, tells The Athletic. \u201cEveryone has opinions on who’s the best fighter, but when it comes to heavyweights, it kind of stops them in their tracks.\u201d<\/p>\n
So what has gone wrong? And can the U.S. ever hope to return to the top of boxing’s most storied division?<\/p>\n
The decline of the U.S. heavyweight is not a new phenomenon, but it is also difficult to pinpoint exactly why it began.<\/p>\n
The Athletic spoke to a multitude of boxing experts \u2014 fighters, coaches, pundits and promoters \u2014 for their view. A common refrain was how boxing had been squeezed out by the rise of other sports in the U.S. and the money big athletes can earn elsewhere, notably in basketball and American football, sports where the earning potential has sky-rocketed in the last two decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sports landscape in the U.S. has changed a lot,\u201d boxing manager Shelly Finkel, who worked with Tyson, Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko, and now Wilder, tells The Athletic. \u201cWhen you have a large, young male athlete they may opt to go into football or basketball where they have large contracts paying them large amounts from the start.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is also a couple of years as a pro before you can make any money unless you\u2019re coming out of an amateur programme and being well known.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2259897948-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Deontay Wilder, who fights Derek Chisora (left) in London on Saturday, is the last American to hold a men’s world heavyweight title (Richard Pelham\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
There is not just money to be made in the professional game \u2014 where teams in the NBA and NFL will stock up on talent \u2014 but also colleges, who cast their nets wide to ensure no potential star is missed.<\/p>\n
Scholarships offer a chance of education as well as high-class training facilities. Beaten-down boxing gyms and a professional career in a sport where fighters often don\u2019t know when the next fight or pay cheque is coming is not so attractive. Although boxing is still part of some college sporting curriculums, the NCAA dropped it in 1960, meaning there are no serious scholarship opportunities.<\/p>\n
\u201cA mom who is worried about her son is not going to push them to boxing because it is perceived as dangerous,” says Teddy Atlas, who learned his trade under Tyson\u2019s first coach Cus D\u2019Amato before training 18 world champions. \u201cThey\u2019re not thinking, \u2018Oh, you know, he can make a living in boxing\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey’re not even thinking, he’s going to make a living necessarily in football, but they are thinking he could get a scholarship. And through that scholarship, he could better his life.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we did have scholarships, I think you would see more kids and more of the bigger kids we’re talking about that instead of going towards those other sports, they would go to boxing.<\/p>\n
\u201cAgain it’s not a guarantee that they’re going to be millionaires, just as they would not be guaranteed millionaires in the NBA or NFL if they choose basketball or football. But it is a guarantee that your kid can go to a good college, get a good degree and have a better chance of getting a good career.\u201d<\/p>\n
All those we spoke to also point to the strength of the U.S. amateur system, or lack of it. USA Boxing has been left behind by European nations, who pumped millions into their programmes from the 1990s, while America was disorganised and dysfunctional, content to live on past glories.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou look at the European heavyweights. They’ve surpassed us in many areas,\u201d says Atlas, who now hosts a weekly podcast called The Fight. \u201cWhy? They’re getting better coaching. They’re getting better programmes. They’re getting better farm systems.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, if you were a farmer and suddenly your crops didn’t produce well, you’d have to look at the seeds, the planting.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-1785931-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Riddick Bowe was the last undisputed U.S. heavyweight champion (Holly Stein\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
It is improving. Irishman Billy Walsh was appointed in 2015, first to lead the U.S. women\u2019s team and then the men, who had failed to win any medal at the London 2012 Olympics.<\/p>\n
Since then they\u2019ve won eight Olympic medals. Claressa Shields added to her gold in London with another at Rio 2016 in the women\u2019s middleweight division. Professional world champions Shakur Stevenson and Keyshawn Davis won silvers at bantamweight and lightweight, respectively. But men’s gold remains elusive. The U.S. have not won an Olympic title in any division since Andre Ward\u2019s light-heavyweight success in 2004.<\/p>\n
The current crop is preparing for Los Angeles 2028. Kelvin Watts played football at Glenville State but now boxes for the U.S. amateur team. Joseph Awinongya Jr is an under-19 world champion at heavyweight who, Walsh predicts, will one day compete at super heavyweight.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also have the draw of the professional ranks as well,\u201d says Walsh, whose elite athletes are now paid. \u201cThat was the thing when I got here \u2014 they were leaving at 18 or 19 to go professional. When I got here, there was no vision of the Olympic Games. The first thing I did was put the five Olympic rings up in the gym.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at the best in the world in the past \u2014 Joe Frazier, Muhammad Ali, George Foreman. All these guys came through an Olympic system before and laid the platform to launch their professional career.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo compete with Uzbekistan (who won five men’s gold medals at Paris 2024) and similar nations, we need a pool of five boxers in the weight to keep it competitive and we are getting there.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is not like there is no talent in the U.S.: the country boasts 17 world champions in the men\u2019s ranks, but none in the heavyweight division.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe U.S. still continues to produce more world champions than any other country. If you look right now, they’re dominating in general,\u201d said Adam Abramowitz, contributing writer for Ring Magazine and creator of the Saturday Night Boxing blog.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut specifically, the heavyweight division continues to be a problem. And because that American heavyweight champion was so much a part of boxing for a long time, I think it hurts a lot of boxing fans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, Ukraine and Britain have slipped in to fill the void. The Klitschkos claimed belts in the 2000s then Usyk in May 2024 when he beat Tyson Fury to become the first undisputed heavyweight champion since Lennox Lewis in 2000.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2226039530-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Ukraine’s Oleksandr Usyk is the dominant force at heavyweight (Richard Pelham\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Britain did not have a heavyweight champion for 93 years between Bob Fitzsimmons and Lewis, have now had eight. Fabio Wardley, who holds the WBO title, is the latest, with Frank Bruno, David Haye, Fury, Anthony Joshua and Daniel Dubois all holding belts at one stage. Then there\u2019s the emergence of Moses Itauma, the unbeaten 21-year-old from Kent who many are tipping to win a world title.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was younger and coming up in the sport, British heavyweights were not taken seriously,\u201d says Trampler. \u201cAmerican heavyweights fattened up on the British ones.\u201d<\/p>\n
That has changed. Hall-of-Fame promoter and British boxing stalwart Frank Warren puts it down to the UK’s changing demographics and an improved amateur set-up which has seen a British boxer win a medal in the super-heavyweight division at four of the last five Olympic Games.<\/p>\n
Yet a U.S. revival should not be discounted. There has been a significant influx of cash from new broadcasters, notably streaming services such as DAZN and Netflix, and Saudi Arabia, which has become a significant player in the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe landscape of the sport is changing dramatically,” says Chris Algieri, an American former light-welterweight world champion. \u201cWe’re seeing a lot of money getting thrown around. I think that could be enticing for a lot of young athletes growing up here in the States.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are title contenders coming in the U.S. Californian Richard Torrez Jr, a 26-year-old who is unbeaten in 14 bouts as a pro, is well placed among different sanctioning bodies\u2019 rankings and improving in his performances. Ohio\u2019s Jared Anderson, also 26, recently signed a co-promotional deal with Warren\u2019s Queensberry to continue his career alongside Top Rank. Anderson lost in 2024 to Martin Bakole in what was his 18th professional fight but he is rebuilding.<\/p>\n
Joshua Edwards, 25, is a 2024 Olympian who is unbeaten in six bouts as a professional. Jarrell Miller, 37, may have served a suspension for doping violations but continues to be given opportunities, even if arguably his most famous moment in the ring came in February when he was punched so hard by Nigerian Kingsley Ibeh his hairpiece flew off<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n Jarrell Miller’s hairpiece came off against Kingsley Ibeh in January (Ishika Samant\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n Yet the feeling is that the sport in the U.S. needs a young superstar heavyweight to reach the top and dominate to really restore the division’s lustre in the country which made it famous, and ensure the next generation is prepared to\u00a0turn down the riches of the NBA and NFL to chase their dreams in the ring.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter Rocky Marciano, there was a lull in boxing and heavyweights,\u201d said Trampler. \u201cFloyd Patterson ended up winning the title, but he was never a huge star, but he was the heavyweight champion of the world. Sonny Liston was a terrific fighter, but people didn’t want to get too close to Sonny because of his image.<\/p>\n “It took Cassius Clay to bring the sport back; later it was the same with the Muhammad Ali comeback and the fights with Foreman and Frazier; then in the 1980s it took Mike Tyson to bring back interest. That’s what we need now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John L. Sullivan, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Larry Holmes, Mike Tyson, Evander…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,11880,85,3276],"class_list":{"0":"post-581201","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-global-sports","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-sports-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2262033042-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n