Usyk is the soft voice in a loud ring

Some men walk into the ring carrying towels. Some men carry demons only they can see. Oleksandr Usyk carries a sense of immortality, all the world title belts and the ghost of Rocky Marciano.

In a division made for behemoths and braggarts, Usyk is an unlikely landlord. He dipped his toe in the heavyweight division back in 2019 and, since then, has come to dominate the stage. He smiles like a wacky substitute schoolteacher, speaks in riddles and fights like a man who has been reading your thoughts for a fortnight. And now he stands on the precipice of something only one other man has ever done – walking away from heavyweight boxing as the undisputed champion and without a blemish on his record. That's not to say he's planning on retiring after this weekend's fight. The day is nevertheless looming.

Marciano did it with 49 wins and a jaw carved from Italian marble. But Usyk is sculpting something more unique – he’s building a legacy not on power but on precision, not on menace but on mystery. He is also the first to unite all four titles in a system so fragmented, so pointlessly bureaucratic, it makes the planning permission process in rural Ireland look like a paragon of streamlined efficiency. And yet he has still managed to bend boxing’s politics to his will without ever raising his voice.

They say heavyweights don’t age well. Their jaws crack, their legs wobble, their aura fades. But Usyk has aged like a pint in the right company – steady, smooth and somehow better every time you look at it. Now the question hangs in the air like a hook that has yet to land: if the Ukrainian wins again in Wembley Stadium this weekend, and remains unbeaten, where does he belong in the pantheon of heavyweight giants?

To answer that, you first have to make sense of the jungle he’s just hacked his way through. There was a time when the heavyweight champion was a singular figure – one man, one belt, one crown. Now the throne is broken into four pieces and guarded by men in suits with clipboards.

The WBO, once dismissed as a poor man’s trinket, is now part of the full regalia and so to become undisputed champion you need to collect all four belts. In this age of confusion, Usyk has done the near-impossible – not just winning titles, but collecting all of them at once. And he did it the old-fashioned way – contra mundum. He beat the men who mattered. One by one. No favours. No fiddling. No shortcuts. In a sport where champions are often protected like Fabergé eggs, Usyk has done the thing nobody was supposed to do anymore: he fought everyone. Not because he had to. But because that’s what the job used to mean.

He didn’t arrive at the top table by charm or committee either. He came the hard way through other people’s backyards and other people’s crowds, with the sort of hospitality that involved judges who may have preferred the local dialect.

At cruiserweight, he didn’t just win – he cleaned out the division with the cold precision of a brain surgeon and the style of a ballroom dancer. When there were no more worlds to conquer, he moved up a weight and started again. He could have tiptoed into the heavyweight scene, could have waited for belts to be vacated, could have waited for reputations to fade. But Usyk has never had much interest in shortcuts. He took on Derek Chisora when people said he was too small. He took on Anthony Joshua when people said he was too clever for his own good. And then he took him on again, just to prove the first time wasn’t a fluke or a favour from the judges.

He beat Daniel Dubois and then he did what no other pugilist could manage – he beat Tyson Fury. Twice. Promoters prefer fighters who manage their careers like pension funds – safe, cautious and allergic to risk. But Usyk seems to have mistaken boxing for a public service and greatness for a debt he’s obliged to repay.

It's nevertheless an irrefutable fact that heavyweight champions are rarely remembered just for their hands. They are remembered for their faces, their voices, their peculiar magic. Ali danced and sang. Tyson growled. Fury ranted. Even the quiet ones like Lennox Lewis carried themselves with the air of a man who expected the world to move aside.

Usyk doesn’t fit the mould because he never asked to be poured into it. And yet he still wears the pressure of his nation as lightly as a bathrobe and treats fight week interviews like they’re riddles to be solved rather than questions to be answered. There is a glint of the philosopher in him, and maybe a touch of the holy fool – he’s the sort of man who understands that boxing, for all its violence, is not really about rage but rhythm. In an industry built on noise, he has become its quietest storm. It's easy to underestimate men like that. Until they’re the last ones standing.

There was a moment in the first Dubois fight when the Ukrainian folded to the canvas, clutching his stomach, the air gone from his lungs and the noise gone from the crowd. Some thought he wouldn’t rise. Some thought he shouldn’t. But he did, like a man standing for something more than himself, and once he was upright again, he fought like someone who had never doubted he would be.

That fight told you everything and nothing. Dubois was raw, younger and swinging for the crown. Usyk was steady, stubborn and impossible to rattle. The rematch this Saturday night may not define Usyk, but it will shape the bookend. Every round, every feint, every left hand carries the weight of something larger now. If he wins – and especially if he wins well – he will edge closer to something no one else has truly touched: undisputed in two divisions, unbeaten, unbought and unbothered.

And what comes next is anyone’s guess. He may retire. He may chase the next payday. He may vanish to a monastery or a field or a mountainside – you wouldn’t rule anything out with him.

But if the end is near – and he has admitted that the day is close – it will feel like the closing of an old chapter in boxing. The game will go on, as it always does – full of sound and spite and smoke. Although boxing continues to reward noise, Usyk reminded us that a soft voice can still shake the room.

Greatness doesn't always need to be heard to be remembered.