Boxing hall of famer and Mirror Sport columnist gives his thoughts on Oleksandr Usyk after the Ukrainian announced he will be relinquishing his heavyweight world titles12:58, 03 Jul 2026Oleksandr Usyk will go down as one of the all-time greats, a fighter who stands comparison with any in the sport.‌You can count on one hand the number of cruiserweights that went on to win a heavyweight title. You don’t need any fingers to count one better than Usyk.‌After unifying the cruiserweight division, he did the same at heavyweight, against the odds, beating all-comers and all styles.‌We have never seen anything like that. He stopped Daniel Dubois, arguably a top-five puncher of all time, twice, and they said Usyk couldn’t punch. He totally switched him off.He befuddled Anthony Joshua twice, and took down Tyson Fury twice, giving away huge height and weight advantage to both.Standing 6ft 3ins and 210 pounds is impressive in mortal terms but no bargain against 21st Century heavyweights. Fury dismissed him as a rabbit, a middleweight, but lost all the same.‌Usyk devoted his best years to the amateurs, fighting an incredible 350 bouts and winning 335, including Olympic and World gold at heavyweight and European gold at light heavy.I look back across history at the great heavyweights, the likes of Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali, Sonny Liston, George Foreman, Larry Holmes, Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis, et al and he is in that company.Usyk doesn’t punch as hard as Liston, Foreman, Tyson or Lewis, but look what he did to Dubois, who hits every bit as hard as them.‌His ring IQ is off the scale. He has an incredible way of working out the strengths and weaknesses of opponents. Fury, Dubois and Joshua each offered their own elite threats, but he nullified all of them.He’s absolutely earned the right to end his career on his own terms. The timing is right. He doesn’t need to be going back to the well to prove anything to anyone.‌And by giving up all his belts he has allowed the young guns to fight it out for themselves. You can’t get any more generous than that.He could have hung on and strung it out. He’s not that guy. Not only has been a credit to the game, he is a really likable guy, genuinely funny and entertaining.I wouldn’t want to rank him above any of the greats, or them above him. They all fought the best in their day. As he has. And like them, when it’s over, Usyk walks straight into the pantheon.Article continues belowWhen you look back on a career, it is not only the wins you remember, it is how fighters represented themselves and their sport that matters, what kind of human being he was. Usyk was, and is, the best of us.Follow Barry on X at @‌ClonesCyclone @mcguigan’s_Gym