Before the first Trancy lee fight, Wilde suffered Flu for two weeks, as was physically sick before the fight. While he took a beating, he lasted 17 rounds with Lee. In tw rematch, it is reported that Wilde made mincemeat of him, proving his greatness. I think people get a little caught up in Wilde's power. While it was out of this world, he was also an extremely good boxer. He often made opponents miss by miles with a smile on his face, just popping out the jab, seemingly taunting his foe.
He sure looks impressive on the existing footage that we have of him. But as McGrain pointed out, it's hard to assess his comp and even harder to put him in the lofty company of men like Greb, Fitz, etc. H2H I wouldn't pick anyone as a lock to beat him as power such as his is a rarity among fighters his size. But Fidel LaBarba, Midget Wolgast, Benny Lynch (who also looks spectacular to me on film), Wee Willie Davies and Pascual Perez are a worthy group and a case can be made that several of them have more impressive wins on their resume than Wilde. Wilde, Driscoll, Davies and Welsh are the tops from Wales, imo.
Very good post Surf-Bat, if you agree t's hard to historically rank some of Wilde's opposition (or at least find his resume one of the harder to assess) I'm pretty sure it's not a case of me overlooking him. He looked very good against Villa (who really impressed me) especially considering he was coming off inactivity and was way past his prime.
And considering Villa clobbered him after the bell in the second which completely disorientated Wilde, and concussed him for 3 weeks
Wilde is verry hard to asses because of the "curse of the flyweights". Records are most incomplete in the lower weight classes over that period, meaning that most of the records for Wildes opponents are missing. Wilde is likley the greatest flyweight of all time, and might be the greatest British fighter of all time, but it is hard to prove either point one way or the other.
great insight and as BB said also about Lee. Another thing about Tancy Lee which alot of people don't realise, he was a BIG Flyweight and struggled at the weight, Lee was more accurately a Bantamweight. So once again Wilde's loss to him is put into perspective, and yet he managed to reverse the outcome as was previously noted. Great, Great little fighter No Question, but Lynch might have just bested him in a fight, but again most certainly, and as I stated earlier, there are more of them than usually given credit for!
I find him very difficult to rate, p4p. I've shuffled him all over the place. I used to have him very high, now he's more mid-way in my top 100. He's arguably all over the place, to me.
He lived until 1969. I'm almost shocked that I haven't seen filmed footage of him interviewed. Surely there must be such footage along with printed interviews. Those might shed some light on his career.