For so long it was the USA who dominated at heavyweight in the professional ranks, with Cuba shining in the amateur code.<\/p>\n
Riddick Bowe was the last American who could claim to be the undisputed world heavyweight champion in 1992.<\/p>\n
In the 1990s, Eastern Europe emerged as the new hotbed before Britain took over more recently – thanks largely to heavy government investment and improvements in amateur programmes.<\/p>\n
It is now six years since an American held a world title, after Deontay Wilder lost his WBC crown to Fury.<\/p>\n
“I think with America, their big guys go play basketball or American football,” said Warren.<\/p>\n
“There is no American football here really and basketball isn’t a massive sport here. The other professional sport which could be competition is rugby, but they can’t earn anything like what they can in boxing.”<\/p>\n
Jarrell Miller, 37, is the highest-ranked American across the four sanctioning bodies – sitting second with the WBA – despite doping violations and a lack of serious credentials to be a world-level competitor.<\/p>\n
Richard Torrez Jr, who won silver at the Tokyo 2020 Games, is ranked number four with the IBF, but the 27-year-old’s hopes of a title shot took a hit in May when he lost to Sanchez.<\/p>\n
Jared Anderson, 26, is rebuilding after defeat by Martin Bakole in 2024, while Joshua Edwards, 26, is a 2024 Olympian who is unbeaten in six professional bouts.<\/p>\n
There is also excitement around 19-year-old Joseph Awinongya Jr, who is already on the radar of promoters including Warren.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For so long it was the USA who dominated at heavyweight in the professional ranks, with Cuba shining…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-776187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776187","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=776187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}