Who's no1 in the heavyweight division right now

[man]

joshua in a division that has reached the
pinnacle of embarrassment. not a single
meaningful fight within a whole year.

an assembly of cowards and weirdos.

[Tanzio]

joshua in a division that has reached the
pinnacle of embarrassment. not a single
meaningful fight within a whole year.

an assembly of cowards and weirdos.

What a load of crap!

How does WKlit fit in to your ridiculous generality? Blame Fury The Snowman if you choose but leave the Ukrainian future HOFer out of it.

How does Joshua deserve to be included in all encompassing accusation? He has stayed active and he is scheduled to meet the greatest HW of the millennium to date in a few months prior to his twentieth fight.

How does Ortiz qualify for your ire? He has faced any and all put in front of him and he is ready and willing to fight anyone.

Why does Parker deserve your spite? He has faced Takam and Ruiz and is in line for some big fights in 2017.

Wilder is the lovechild of Bambi and a preying mantis on ice but he did face Szpilka and Arreola before being sidelined with an injury.

PEDvetkin is willing to fight anyone who doesn't mind him being on PEDs.

Surely you can't be referring to Ruiz who capped a four fight year by traveling to NZ and losing a close and competitive decision with Parker.

The table is set for 2017. WKlit v Joshua is just the first course.

What's the problem?

[Impractical Poster]

[davie]

Wladimir Klitschko has already defeated David Haye, Kubrat Pulev and Alexander Povetkin. So he has to be rated as one of the top heavyweights in the division, despite suffering a rather bad day at the office against Tyson Fury...

... Wladimir Klitschko is the only fighter to have actually faced multiple names listed in your poll. If you look at the list of fighters included in the aggregated top-ten heavyweight rankings of ESPN and The Ring, Wladimir Klitschko has faced five of them (i.e. Tyson Fury, Kubrat Pulev, Bryant Jennings, David Haye & Alexander Povetkin). So he deserves some sort of praise from the forum.

The problem with that thinking is, WK beat those guys 5 to 2 years ago...

All approaches to formulating opinions and predictions are flawed, since none of us possesses 100% accurate psychic prescience.

However, I prefer to live in an evidence-based reality, whereby pugilists earn their praise by defeating their foes inside the ring, rather than granting them an honorary rite of passage for being proclaimed as the best heavyweight on the planet, without requiring the need for validation.

So whilst I do concede some of the points you make, I can’t dismiss the value of resumes’ when evaluating a fighters' proven talents.

You are right and I do tend to want to see evidence of someones abilities through their achievements in the ring.

But as a boxing fan you have to be able to put some faith in your ability to judge the talent in front of you and say boxer A is clearly more talented than boxer B. Surely there are some cases where you just don't need the 2 to face each other in the ring.
That's how we have to judge p4p conversations, when 2 guys of comparable talent are 8 weight classes apart,
that's how we are able to judge the careers of guys from weak era's like Larry Holmes and guage their talent against others that existed in talent laden eras.
We gauge it on the ability he was able to display and not simply on who he faced and who he beat and indeed who he didn't beat.

I mean lets take an example, Lomachenko might not have faced a fighter at the level of Ward or Kovalev, but he's clearly got top 5 p4p level skills.
You wouldn't have to see him face the top guys to know he could beat someone like Orlando Salido

[jbizzle20]

It's still Joshua, based on a combination of resume and ability.

[ldlamb]

No one.

After April, the winner of Joshua-Klitschko.

That's the only real answer.