Boxing Challenge: Usyk wins heavyweight debut

The boxing challenge weekend was predictable and the winners were impressive enough in various degrees to think about future endeavors more than the victories on Saturday.

In Chicago, in front of a raucous crowd, former world cruiserweight champion Oleksandr Usyk won all seven rounds in his first fight at heavyweight and dominated the final few rounds on his way to defeating late substitute Chazz Witherspoon, when Witherspoon didn't answer the bell to start the eighth round.
Usyk took the first few rounds without any real harm, but it wasn't until the fourth round when Usyk began to step up the pace and landing more punches against the overmatched Witherspoon.
Usyk used his boxing ability to land punches from the angles that he dominated the cruiserweight division with and was taking the energy out of Witherspoon with each round and seemed to be on his way to knocking out the last-minute replacement, but the corner was smart enough to see that their fighter was out of gas and chose an honorable surrender.
Usyk looked good in his initial heavyweight bout, but even though Usyk is the mandatory challenger in the WBO for the winner of the Andy Ruiz-Anthony Joshua rematch, he might be better suited to fight another fight against better competition before challenging for the championship.
Former WBO champion Joseph Parker is with Matchroom and would be an excellent gauge for how Usyk would perform against a top ten level fighter with another name being mentioned is England's Dereck Chisora, who is also with Matchroom.
Chisora is a strong fighter, who would physically test Usyk and has been a gatekeeper in the division.
If you are a legitimate contender, you defeat Chisora and often soundly, if you are of the second level, Chisora generally beats you.
Either would make plenty of sense for Usyk's next outing.

The co-main event saw Dmitry Bivol retain his WBA light heavyweight title with a lopsided unanimous decision over Lenin Castillo.
Bivol knocked Castillo down in round six, but didn't press his advantage and settled for winning every round on my card for a 120-107 total.
Dmitry Bivol is certainly capable of defeating any of the other top light heavyweights but has moved from being an exciting power puncher to an effective, but not always entertaining champion that dominates his challengers but doesn't leave the crowd raving as they depart.
Bivol is now a promotional free agent, so he could choose to move to Top Rank for a shot at the winner of next week's unification fight between WBC champion Oleksandr Gvozdyk and IBF titleholder Artur Beterbiev, but it's unknown whether he will decide to do so.

Earlier in the day from Leeds, England, Josh Warrington retained his IBF featherweight title with a second-round knockout of Sofiane Takoucht.
Warrington, who is not known as a heavy puncher, knocked down Takoucht twice in the second round before the final knockdown that finished the show.

In the boxing challenge, Ramon Malpica and I each scored five points on the weekend.
My lead is now 244-213.