The decline of U.S. heavyweight boxing feels terminal. Can it be saved?

John L. Sullivan, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Larry Holmes, Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield.

They are some of boxing’s most fabled figures, men who captured the imagination not just of their native United States but the world. They were the titans who turned the heavyweight division into the sport’s blue riband class, and made the sport a commercial juggernaut.

Yet the era when the U.S. dominated the heavyweight class is becoming an increasingly distant memory. Riddick Bowe was the last U.S. boxer who could claim to be the undisputed world heavyweight champion and his reign ended in 1992. It is five years since any American held a world title — Deontay Wilder was the last, and he lost the WBC heavyweight title to Tyson Fury in February 2020 after a five-year reign.

The division’s powerbase has long since pivoted to Europe, specifically Ukraine and Great Britain, and there are precious few signs that the U.S. is poised to mount any meaningful comeback.

Wilder — a powerful puncher who would once have made a case for being the No 1 in the division — fights on Saturday against Derek Chisora in London. But while he insists he has not given up hope of returning to the top, he is 40 years old and his prime may be behind him.

“The question that I frequently ask rhetorically is who's the best American fighter and who's the best American heavyweight?,” Bruce Trampler, the long-time matchmaker for Top Rank, tells The Athletic. “Everyone has opinions on who's the best fighter, but when it comes to heavyweights, it kind of stops them in their tracks.”

So what has gone wrong? And can the U.S. ever hope to return to the top of boxing's most storied division?

The decline of the U.S. heavyweight is not a new phenomenon, but it is also difficult to pinpoint exactly why it began.

The Athletic spoke to a multitude of boxing experts — fighters, coaches, pundits and promoters — for their view. A common refrain was how boxing had been squeezed out by the rise of other sports in the U.S. and the money big athletes can earn elsewhere, notably in basketball and American football, sports where the earning potential has sky-rocketed in the last two decades.

“The sports landscape in the U.S. has changed a lot,” boxing manager Shelly Finkel, who worked with Tyson, Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko, and now Wilder, tells The Athletic. “When you have a large, young male athlete they may opt to go into football or basketball where they have large contracts paying them large amounts from the start.

“It is also a couple of years as a pro before you can make any money unless you’re coming out of an amateur programme and being well known.”

There is not just money to be made in the professional game — where teams in the NBA and NFL will stock up on talent — but also colleges, who cast their nets wide to ensure no potential star is missed.

Scholarships offer a chance of education as well as high-class training facilities. Beaten-down boxing gyms and a professional career in a sport where fighters often don’t know when the next fight or pay cheque is coming is not so attractive. Although boxing is still part of some college sporting curriculums, the NCAA dropped it in 1960, meaning there are no serious scholarship opportunities.

“A mom who is worried about her son is not going to push them to boxing because it is perceived as dangerous," says Teddy Atlas, who learned his trade under Tyson’s first coach Cus D’Amato before training 18 world champions. “They’re not thinking, ‘Oh, you know, he can make a living in boxing’.

“They're not even thinking, he's going to make a living necessarily in football, but they are thinking he could get a scholarship. And through that scholarship, he could better his life.

“If we did have scholarships, I think you would see more kids and more of the bigger kids we're talking about that instead of going towards those other sports, they would go to boxing.

“Again it's not a guarantee that they're going to be millionaires, just as they would not be guaranteed millionaires in the NBA or NFL if they choose basketball or football. But it is a guarantee that your kid can go to a good college, get a good degree and have a better chance of getting a good career.”

All those we spoke to also point to the strength of the U.S. amateur system, or lack of it. USA Boxing has been left behind by European nations, who pumped millions into their programmes from the 1990s, while America was disorganised and dysfunctional, content to live on past glories.

“You look at the European heavyweights. They've surpassed us in many areas,” says Atlas, who now hosts a weekly podcast called The Fight. “Why? They're getting better coaching. They're getting better programmes. They're getting better farm systems.

“I mean, if you were a farmer and suddenly your crops didn't produce well, you'd have to look at the seeds, the planting.”

It is improving. Irishman Billy Walsh was appointed in 2015, first to lead the U.S. women’s team and then the men, who had failed to win any medal at the London 2012 Olympics.

Since then they’ve won eight Olympic medals. Claressa Shields added to her gold in London with another at Rio 2016 in the women’s middleweight division. Professional world champions Shakur Stevenson and Keyshawn Davis won silvers at bantamweight and lightweight, respectively. But men's gold remains elusive. The U.S. have not won an Olympic title in any division since Andre Ward’s light-heavyweight success in 2004.

The current crop is preparing for Los Angeles 2028. Kelvin Watts played football at Glenville State but now boxes for the U.S. amateur team. Joseph Awinongya Jr is an under-19 world champion at heavyweight who, Walsh predicts, will one day compete at super heavyweight.

“We also have the draw of the professional ranks as well,” says Walsh, whose elite athletes are now paid. “That was the thing when I got here — they were leaving at 18 or 19 to go professional. When I got here, there was no vision of the Olympic Games. The first thing I did was put the five Olympic rings up in the gym.

“Look at the best in the world in the past — Joe Frazier, Muhammad Ali, George Foreman. All these guys came through an Olympic system before and laid the platform to launch their professional career.

“To compete with Uzbekistan (who won five men's gold medals at Paris 2024) and similar nations, we need a pool of five boxers in the weight to keep it competitive and we are getting there.”

It is not like there is no talent in the U.S.: the country boasts 17 world champions in the men’s ranks, but none in the heavyweight division.

“The U.S. still continues to produce more world champions than any other country. If you look right now, they're dominating in general,” said Adam Abramowitz, contributing writer for Ring Magazine and creator of the Saturday Night Boxing blog.

“But specifically, the heavyweight division continues to be a problem. And because that American heavyweight champion was so much a part of boxing for a long time, I think it hurts a lot of boxing fans.”

Instead, Ukraine and Britain have slipped in to fill the void. The Klitschkos claimed belts in the 2000s then Usyk in May 2024 when he beat Tyson Fury to become the first undisputed heavyweight champion since Lennox Lewis in 2000.

Britain did not have a heavyweight champion for 93 years between Bob Fitzsimmons and Lewis, have now had eight. Fabio Wardley, who holds the WBO title, is the latest, with Frank Bruno, David Haye, Fury, Anthony Joshua and Daniel Dubois all holding belts at one stage. Then there’s the emergence of Moses Itauma, the unbeaten 21-year-old from Kent who many are tipping to win a world title.

“When I was younger and coming up in the sport, British heavyweights were not taken seriously,” says Trampler. “American heavyweights fattened up on the British ones.”

That has changed. Hall-of-Fame promoter and British boxing stalwart Frank Warren puts it down to the UK's changing demographics and an improved amateur set-up which has seen a British boxer win a medal in the super-heavyweight division at four of the last five Olympic Games.

Yet a U.S. revival should not be discounted. There has been a significant influx of cash from new broadcasters, notably streaming services such as DAZN and Netflix, and Saudi Arabia, which has become a significant player in the sport.

“The landscape of the sport is changing dramatically," says Chris Algieri, an American former light-welterweight world champion. “We're seeing a lot of money getting thrown around. I think that could be enticing for a lot of young athletes growing up here in the States.”

There are title contenders coming in the U.S. Californian Richard Torrez Jr, a 26-year-old who is unbeaten in 14 bouts as a pro, is well placed among different sanctioning bodies’ rankings and improving in his performances. Ohio’s Jared Anderson, also 26, recently signed a co-promotional deal with Warren’s Queensberry to continue his career alongside Top Rank. Anderson lost in 2024 to Martin Bakole in what was his 18th professional fight but he is rebuilding.

Joshua Edwards, 25, is a 2024 Olympian who is unbeaten in six bouts as a professional. Jarrell Miller, 37, may have served a suspension for doping violations but continues to be given opportunities, even if arguably his most famous moment in the ring came in February when he was punched so hard by Nigerian Kingsley Ibeh his hairpiece flew off.

Yet the feeling is that the sport in the U.S. needs a young superstar heavyweight to reach the top and dominate to really restore the division's lustre in the country which made it famous, and ensure the next generation is prepared to turn down the riches of the NBA and NFL to chase their dreams in the ring.

“After Rocky Marciano, there was a lull in boxing and heavyweights,” said Trampler. “Floyd Patterson ended up winning the title, but he was never a huge star, but he was the heavyweight champion of the world. Sonny Liston was a terrific fighter, but people didn't want to get too close to Sonny because of his image.

"It took Cassius Clay to bring the sport back; later it was the same with the Muhammad Ali comeback and the fights with Foreman and Frazier; then in the 1980s it took Mike Tyson to bring back interest. That's what we need now.”

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