The World After Usyk-Fury 2

This Saturday, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Oleksandr Usyk will be defending his status as undisputed heavyweight champ and Tyson Fury will be looking to avenge the first loss of his career by taking the belts from Usyk. The rematch of May’s entertaining title fight will once again establish a “best of the big men” in boxing.

But what then?

Kick and scream and deny the reality all you want, but the fact is that a middish heavyweight era is coming to a close. What remains will be transition into the unknown.

So, again…What happens after Usyk-Fury 2?

Well, the obvious answer is Usyk-Fury 3.

The hope and the prayer of Saudi Arabia’s sportswashing front man Turki Alalshikh is that Fury finds a way to take this second fight with the Ukrainian to force a rubber match. Usyk-Fury 3 is really the only somewhat bankable heavyweight title fight out there—with “somewhat” being the operative word there, as this pairing has not been a needle-mover– and making a part three would put off the inevitable search for a salable heavyweight rivalry replacement for at least six more months.

“I want Tyson, but I think Usyk…I hope Tyson do it,” Alalshikh told media during Usyk-Fury2 fight week. “We want to see the third.”

But while a “what Turki wants, Turki gets” dynamic may be swirling around the title fight this weekend, the heavyweight division’s top tier remains in motion.

IBF titlist Daniel Dubois is set to defend his belt against Joseph Parker this February, also in Riyadh. It’s a logical assumption to make that whoever wins this fight will move on to win the ultimate winner of Usyk-Fury.

On that same February Riyadh card, China’s Zhilei Zhang will take on Germany’s Agit Kabayel in what’s being billed as an interim WBC heavyweight title bout. The winner will also have a case for “next dibs” on the Usyk-Fury victor, although he’ll probably have to wait on that opportunity for a bit as neither has favorite son status among the Saudi overlords.

Meanwhile, the IBF has ordered a final eliminator between Scotland-residing Congolese Martin Bakole and Nigerian Efe Ajagba. Realistically, the winner of this one will be far away from a shot at the Usyk-Fury winner and much more likely to be paired off against the winner of Zhang-Kabayel.

And then there’s Anthony Joshua, whose still-considerable drawing power makes him a top contender even after getting starched in five rounds by Dubois and going 6-4 in his last ten. If Fury wins this Saturday, Joshua will leapfrog every contender above him and likely get rushed straight into a money fight with “The Gypsy King” for what will surely be the biggest money fight in UK history– with Riyadh Season branding all over it, of course.

Even if Fury loses to Usyk, though, expect the Joshua fight to happen. A losers bracket heavyweight clash between Joshua and Fury will be too big to pass up.

At this point, the heavyweight division is a 7 or 8-man division with lots of matchup recycling likely on the horizon as there just doesn’t seem to be all that much future beyond the current top tier.

This means that, at best (and assuming fighters stay active), we have about two years of respectable heavyweight pairings.

After that, who knows what happens? Turki Alalshikh and the Saudis have been good at harvesting since they began buying out the sport, but they’ve been absolutely derelict in planting where they’ve harvested.