He is great managed. He is IBF mandatory, because he took the chances others didn`t.
In theory many guys could beat him, but just these guys remain inactive or they have a terrible management.
One fight in a year is not been managed well and this showed in his performance tonight, he was gasing from round 8. There was many fights to keep him active. Hearns continuous rematch clauses held the division up and we all know his priority is Joshua.
As a fighter, you need to be able to deal with that somehow.
Chino dealt with it against Broner.
Crawford dealt with it against Horn.
What's Hrgovic's excuse? Other than being one-dimensional?
I haven't the foggiest... But I know who does!! I would ask Doctor Z, I am sure he can explain exactly why the stiff Croat appeared to be lacking when being hugged by the kangaroo doctor.
I see that you are greatly underestimating Hrgovic chances against Usyk. Everything is in how someone match up with someone, and Hrgovic has chances against Usyk since he learned how to handle shorter fighters. That is one of his strongest sides actually.
To illustrate that, do yourself a favour and check on youtube Hrgovic fight against Sergey Kuzmin (European gold medalist in 2010... Usyk was in 2008 and Hrgovic was European gold medalist in 2015 ), Kuzmin looks like someone took a random a guy from a bar. Then find Sergey Kuzmin fight against Joe Joyce where he knocked out Joyce.
What happened? Well, Kuzmin was a terrible match up for Joyce, as someone in comments said: Short Heavyweight with punch and good hand speed are nightmare for Joyce.
Well, Kuzimin is not even that short, he is the height of Usyk (and nowhere near as good as Usyk, of course) ... however, that was a perfect height difference for (much younger) Hrgovic who was literally mercilessly beating Kuzmin for the whole 5 rounds (BTW, just to mention, Klitschko was the all time greatest master in handling shorter fighters)
Later, in professional career Kuzmin lost against Martin Bakole and Michael Hunter (his only two losses), so it's clear he is not such a big class, but he is still a serious fighter who matches up badly against a Hrgovic.
And after that, please find the fight between Hrgovic and Joyce, two equally matched fighters where Joyce won in split decision in a really great fight (you will not regret watching it).
For the end, perhaps you remember that Michael Hunter was supposed to fight Hrgovic in IBF final eliminator and was happy about it .. and suddenly he gave up of the fight. What happened? He and his team analyzed Hrgovic and noticed that he is great at handling shorter fighters and concluded they really don't need that kind of fight.
I literally stopped reading once you compared Usyk to Kuzman
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