The Best Heavyweight Prospects Today

The heavyweight division is often regarded as boxing's "Blue Ribbon" division, the main one, the one that shows the health of the sport. When the division is full of exciting matches and fighters boxing is on a high, names like Louis, Ali and Tyson helped to keep boxing in the limelight when they each ruled over the fight game. Though to true boxing fans, we know it's the smaller weights, the Welterweights, the Middleweights and the Lightweights that usually keep us interested in the sport. Fighters like Henry Armstrong, Sugar Ray Robinson, Marvin Hagler, Roberto Duran, Sugar Ray Leonard, Tommy Hearns, Julio Cesar Chavez, Erik Morales, Marco Antonio Barrera, Felix Trinidad, Oscar De La Hoya and Manny Pacquiao are the ones that we tune in to see away from the heavyweights.

Though sometimes it's a matter of waiting for the next heavyweight star to just come through, boxing works in cycles, we get the highs, like Jack Dempsey, followed by the lows of fighters like Primo Carnera, Max Baer and James J Braddock. The highs of Joe Louis was followed by the Walcott and Charles reigns. The wrecking ball of Marciano was followed by a pass the parcel between Floyd Patterson and Ingemar Johansson. Ali was followed by a split title in the late 1960's, then the mess of the early part of the 1980's where we had 4 different titles the continued into the 1990's until Lennox Lewis tidied things up.

Though the Klitschko's currently dominate holding the IBF.WBO/IBO titles with one man (Wladimir) and the WBC with Vitali and Haye holding onto the final belt (WBA) it's starting to look lukewarm at the moment. Haye promised much before his title fight with Valuev but delivered little until the final 30 seconds or so of the fight which makes it seem like he may not be the "saviour" he claimed he would. But who could be the saviour...

One of the three candidates I'll put forward is Odlanier Solis, on the condition he loses some weight, the once Olympic Gold Medal winner came in to the professional ranks as a an ultra hyped fighter who was going to show us was Felix Savon and Teofilo Stevenson should have done. Sadly the skilful fighter has ballooned to over 270lbs and despite being unbeaten so far with a 15-0 (11KO's) record he'll have to lose a lot of weight to actively compete with the Klitschko's or Haye who would just be too agile for the "big man". In fact, from the weight he came in at in his last fight, Solis is clinically obese with a BMI of above 35 (which is why he was awarded the 2009 award for "Not turning up in shape".)

Denis Boytsov, the man some have dubbed the White Tyson is amongst the youngest heavyweight prospects aged just 23 but also one of the most active having had 26 fights (all wins, with 21 KO's) since he turned professional in late 2004. Standing at 6 foot 1 he may be a bit on the small side for some of the current "super heavyweights" though he's strong, tough and aggressive, very possibly the thing boxing needs, with a hard dig and a terrier attitude that will see fans quickly attach themselves to him.
Though he is fighting out of Germany and is a Russian by birth, we can only hope the English speakers will give him the credit he deserves when he does make that leap to the big, and hopefully he'll be fighting in the US by the end of 2011.

Andrzej Wawrzyk is another youngster with talent who seems to be progressing swiftly, having picked up the WBC youth title in just his 12^th fight the 22 year old unbeaten Pole maybe inspired by the success of Tomasz Adamek and go on to achieve big things. Having won 15 straight with 10 in side the distance some may say he lacks power, though often a young heavyweight hasn't grown into their power at that age so give him 4 or 5 years to mature and we may well have a super star on our hands.

Though of course there's others such as Tyson Fury, Mike Perez and American based Nigerian Lateef Kayode looks to have a punch on him. Whilst Povetkin and Chambers were ignored from the list due to their ages and experience.