{"id":733957,"date":"2026-08-10T23:14:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T23:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/733957\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T23:14:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T23:14:09","slug":"usyk-names-the-fighter-who-would-have-ended-floyd-mayweathers-unbeaten-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/733957\/","title":{"rendered":"Usyk names the fighter who would have ended Floyd Mayweather’s unbeaten run"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oleksandr Usyk<\/a> suspects there is one fighter who, in a fantasy showdown, would have become the first and only man to defeat Floyd Mayweather in a professional ring.<\/p>\n

Very few came close to trumping the all-time great and, even when they did, it was scarcely conceivable that they would emerge victorious on the judges\u2019 scorecards.<\/p>\n

Take Mayweather\u2019s first encounter with Jose Luis Castillo<\/a>, for instance, and many will argue that the elite technician should have lost his WBC super-lightweight title in 2002.<\/p>\n

Similarly, the American was pushed tantalisingly close to defeat against Marcos Maidana<\/a>, who ultimately lost a majority decision in their 2014 welterweight contest.<\/p>\n

Mayweather also won their respective rematches but, even so, the two South Americans are widely credited for giving the Hall of Famer two of his toughest fights.<\/p>\n

It could therefore be argued that there was a blueprint to defeat the 50-0 icon, given the stylistic similarities between Castillo and Maidana.<\/p>\n

From a different perspective, though, Usyk has suggested that Terence Crawford<\/a> would have completed the mission that so few were even capable of attempting.<\/p>\n

Speaking with Daily Mail Boxing<\/a>, the Ukrainian named \u2018Bud\u2019 as the man to not only defeat Mayweather but also the likes of Sugar Ray Leonard<\/a>, Pernell Whitaker and Sugar Ray Robinson.<\/p>\n

Like Mayweather, Crawford retired as an unbeaten five-division world champion, shortly after dethroning Canelo Alvarez for the undisputed super-middleweight crown last September.<\/p>\n

But despite ending his career at 168lbs, Crawford was arguably most effective at welterweight, where he scored a ninth-round finish over Errol Spence Jr for the undisputed championship in 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oleksandr Usyk suspects there is one fighter who, in a fantasy showdown, would have become the first and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-733957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}