{"id":745331,"date":"2026-08-21T17:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T17:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/745331\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T17:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T17:34:08","slug":"evander-holyfield-names-the-knockout-artist-who-couldve-beaten-oleksandr-usyk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/745331\/","title":{"rendered":"Evander Holyfield names the knockout artist who could’ve beaten Oleksandr Usyk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Evander Holyfield<\/a> was unsure who to favour in a fantasy showdown between Oleksandr Usyk<\/a> and one of his former rivals.<\/p>\n

Like Holyfield, Usyk became the consensus top dog at 200lbs before moving up to heavyweight and, once again, cementing himself as the very best.<\/p>\n

Even while contending with a notable size disadvantage, the Ukrainian was able to dethrone Anthony Joshua<\/a> before eventually becoming the undisputed king against Tyson Fury<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Having twice beaten the two Brits, Usyk is now widely regarded as one of the all-time greats, among the likes of Holyfield<\/a>, Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis.<\/p>\n

At the same time, though, Holyfield is not convinced that the unbeaten southpaw would have defeated a prime Mike Tyson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Real Deal\u2019 fought \u2018Iron\u2019 Mike in 1996, causing a sizable upset by stopping the formidable puncher in round 11, before winning their immediate rematch via an infamous third-round disqualification<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And while this was not even the most formidable version of Tyson, Holyfield would nonetheless back his former foe to defeat the majority of heavyweights throughout history.<\/p>\n

When it comes to a clash with Usyk, however, the American has told Daily Mail Boxing<\/a> that he would struggle to predict a winner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t exactly know [who would win] that one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Usyk, Tyson was never the biggest heavyweight but, because of his speed and explosiveness he was able to win his first 19 fights by knockout and become a dominant world champion during the late 1980s.<\/p>\n

Usyk, on the other hand, relies more on his technical prowess and, against Tyson, would need to be almost punch-perfect in order to emerge victorious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Evander Holyfield was unsure who to favour in a fantasy showdown between Oleksandr Usyk and one of his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":745332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-745331","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\/745331","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=745331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/745332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}