Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you might forget who’s running things in the heavyweight division.
Yes, Oleksandr Usyk is the clear and – technically or not – undisputed heavyweight king. Tyson Fury, his predecessor, will take another crack at Usyk in December. Anthony Joshua, a one-time unified champion, seems to have found a career second wind under trainer Ben Davison. Even former contenders Derek Chisora and Joe Joyce on Saturday will try to prove, perhaps just to themselves, that they can still run with the division’s big dogs. All of them, however, are in their mid-30s or older.
Meanwhile, the division’s future torchbearers – namely Daniel Dubois, 26, and Jared Anderson, 24 – have yet to fully light the flame. Dubois, in particular, has shown signs that a step forward may be coming, but it’s worth noting that graduation from life-and-death with Filip Hrgovic to toppling one of the heavyweight pillars is one helluva leap.
And then there’s Otto Wallin.
Having taken swings at Fury and Joshua – though unsuccessful, and without a title at stake – Wallin, 33, is neither fish nor fowl. Too old to be an up-and-comer, he is also too young to be dismissed as a fighter in his sunset years. On Friday, Sweden’s Wallin (26-2, 14 KOs) will face Onoriode Ehwarieme (20-4, 19 KOs) at the Tropicana Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to stay ready for any opportunity that materializes from an increasingly fractured and calcifying division.
“I don’t think about it too much right now,” Wallin told BoxingScene. “I think the most important thing is just getting back in there, getting this win and then just taking it step by step. I mean, I was No. 2 in the IBF, but then I lost to Joshua, so I got pushed back a little bit. But the most important thing for me right now is just getting this win and taking it from there.”
On paper, that seems an extremely doable task. Nigeria’s Ehwarieme, 36, has never faced an opponent as skilled or experienced as Wallin, and in his most pressing challenge to date, he was taken apart last August in a first-round stoppage by Uzbek southpaw Bakhodir Jalolov.
Still, Ehwarieme’s 6-foot-7 stature and power (he once put together a 16-fight knockout streak) can’t be ignored. Wallin has been in the ring with bigger and better (Fury, for one, at 6-foot-9), though, so he has a plan for the rare fighters who eclipse his own 6-foot-5½ frame.
“I think that you can do some boxing with them,” he said. “Also be aggressive, of course. … If they’re a good boxer, you probably got to take the reach away. So stay on them, hit the body and try to get to the inside. I think that was working pretty well when I fought Fury, and I think that it will work good in this fight.”
Wallin is currently ranked in the top 15 by only one of the main sanctioning bodies (he’s the IBF’s No. 12 heavyweight), but boxing has a way of trivializing such things, and Wallin has enough name recognition and has performed well enough to consider the possibility that a title shot – especially now that Usyk has vacated a belt – may still come his way.
“As a fan, I think that’s a really good thing,” Wallin said of Usyk’s former undisputed status. “But for me as a fighter, I mean, of course it’s good if the titles are a bit spread out. For a guy in my position, that’s just good.”
But Wallin, always the pragmatist, intends to stay focused on the here and now – which, in this moment, means keeping a close eye on Ehwarieme’s right hand.
“He has, like, 19 knockouts out of 20 wins, so he can probably punch a little bit,” Wallin said. “So I’ve just got to be sharp at all times.”
Jason Langendorf is the former Boxing Editor of ESPN.com, has contributed to Ringside Seat and the Queensberry Rules, and has written about boxing for Vice, The Guardian, Chicago Sun-Times and other publications. A member of the Boxing Writers Association of America, he can be followed on X and LinkedIn, and emailed at [email protected].
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