Wilder's resume

One of the reasons why people underrate Wilder's record is because they assume that the typical opponents in AJ's pool of wins are much better than Wilder's when there isn't any evidence for this. They used to do this with Fury's wins over Chisora but we now know that Chisora at his best was at least as good as Parker, Whyte and Ruiz. Another reason is that they focus heavily on "names" and pretend that the likes of 39 year old Povetkin, 13 months inactive, 39.5 year old Pulev and 17 months inactive, 41 year old, dethroned in his last fight Wlad were at or close to their best. In reality there is no legitimate justification for having Wilder below 3rd place on the strength of his heavyweight resume and there is a good case for him being above AJ.

Take Wilder's 2013 win over an old, shopworn and inactive version of World Championship SHW bronze medallist and former WBO heavyweight champion Siarhei Liakhovich (232 lbs, 25-5) an extremely brutal, seizure-inducing two shot KO inside the first 2 minutes (8 rounds earlier than Jennings and Helenius and 11 rounds earlier than Briggs). 16 months later the very short, stubby, morbidly obese fringe contender Andy Ruiz had a competitive fight with Liakhovich (who had been stopped five times by this point) and was taken the 10 round distance. Two years post-Liakhovich, Ruiz went the 12 round distance with Joseph Parker in NZ in a highly competitive losing effort before going on to destroy AJ as a 25-1 no-hoper, dropping him four times on route to making him quit in the 7th round. However, just two fights later Ruiz was dropped, almost dropped twice, hurt multiple times and got a 12 round decision in a war against a 40 year old, 18 months inactive/retired, worn and injury prone Chris Arreola who was coming off a loss to Kownacki. Conversely, Wilder had no trouble with a 5 years younger, four fights fresher version of Arreola (246 lbs, 36-4-1) winning every round, dropping Arreola in the 4th and retiring him after 8, despite Wilder allegedly sustaining torn biceps, and a broken right hand from the 4th round.

Several fights post-Liakhovich, Wilder beat the big punching, hard-chinned WBC heavyweight champion Bermane Stiverne (239 lbs, 24-1-1) 119-108 in their first fight and KO'd a 2 year inactive Stiverne in the 1st round of their rematch (255 lbs, 25-2-1) nearly 3 years later. Stiverne was subsequently inactive for 16 months, came back at 40 years old, almost 20 lbs heavier, in atrocious condition and still took Joe Joyce into the 6th round. In his previous two fights before he fought Wilder for the first time, Stiverne had beaten an even younger and fresher version of Arreola (top 8 and top 10 ranked) than the one Wilder fought, both times more convincingly than Ruiz beat the 40 year old retired version.

Southpaw Ortiz (239 lbs, 28-0 and 31-1) got his best win over a top 6th ranked, un-KO’d Bryant Jennings with a 7th round TKO: a better result than Rivas (come from behind TKO12) or Joyce in Britain (competitive UD) went on to achieve. He stopped the iron-chinned Dave Allen in Britain within 7 rounds: 3 rounds earlier than Yoka in France while Whyte (who fought Allen before Ortiz) was taken the 10 round distance. He KO'd Cojanu in 2: slightly faster than Dubois in Britain and 7 rounds earlier than Ajagba, while Parker had previously gone the 12 round distance with Cojanu and lost several rounds in NZ. Judging by their performances against mutual opponents, 5th ranked Ortiz would be AJ's 2nd or 3rd best win; Wilder knocked Ortiz down four times and KO'd him twice (Ortiz’s only losses and KD’s received in 34 fights) both times in the 2nd half of the fight: Ortiz had a combined total of 50 minutes to stop Wilder but he was unable to do so.

Duhaupas (236 lbs, 32-2) beat Manuel Charr and got a post-Wilder 6th round KO over Helenius, southpaw mover Szpilka (233 lbs, 20-1) beat an older but still serviceable former IBF cruiserweight champion Adamek and got a post-Wilder win over Wach and Washington (239 lbs, 18-0-1) KO’d Jerry Forrest in 2 and got a post-Wilder 8th round KO over Helenius. Even in the fights where Wilder was getting outboxed or it was close (Szpilka, Washington, Ortiz x2, Fury 1) he knew that the American judges would favour his work (only Ortiz in the rematch was ahead with at least two of the judges at the time of Wilder’s 7th round KO) so he was better able to conserve his energy, minimise openings, accumulate damage on the boxer, wait for them to become overconfident and snipe them after they fatigued and slowed down. Even if Wilder is outboxed and the fight goes the distance (Fury 1) he is still hard to beat on points because of A-side/hometown bias and the scoring effect of any knockdowns he gets: a Wilder KD can turn a round/point for his opponent into two points for him. There is method in Wilder’s apparent idiocy and madness, no doubt devised by intelligent trainers.

I regard Wilder's win over an un-KO’d Duhaupas as one of his five most impressive (along with Stiverne 1, Ortiz x2 and Breazeale) because he demonstrated the ability to clearly outbox a very durable, big, rangy and relentless pressure fighter (who had virtually closed Wilder’s left eye late in the fight) outmuscle Duhaupas, fight effectively on the inside and force the late stoppage. And while quality matters more than quantity, racking up 10 defences (9 by KO) of his WBC belt over 5 years was a very impressive feat, requiring not just exceptional talent but great focus, motivation and discipline. Every fighter on the WBC ladder was thinking about Wilder, preparing specifically for him well in advance and studying a vast quantity of footage of him, while Wilder had many contenders to think about and could only fully occupy himself with one at a time. Contenders tend to train harder and raise their game in a world title fight, which is more often than not the biggest night of their career. Moreover, heavyweight is the division where any given opponent has the biggest puncher's chance (especially today with larger heavyweights) and Wilder faced a greater variety of body types, styles and stances in his title defence run than any champion before the Klitschko era. Wilder managed more consecutive heavyweight title defences than Tyson, Lewis and Vitali: in the modern era only Wlad surpasses him in this respect. He was also not overthrown by a B/C level heavyweight like Douglas, McCall, Rahman, Sanders or Brewster but by the best heavyweight of his era and the best H2H heavyweight of all time.

Wilder’s exceptional talent was clear from the fact that he won the U.S. National Golden Gloves and the U.S. National Championships in 2007, defeated the Olympic gold medallist and World Championship silver medallist southpaw Chakhkiev and won an Olympic bronze medal at 91 KG in Beijing 2008 on less than 3 years of boxing experience before he turned 23, all while working various day jobs. Despite Wilder’s reputation as a technically limited KO artist, 18 of his 22 listed non-walkover wins in the amateurs were by decision and he was earmarked by legendary trainer Manny Steward as the second best heavyweight prospect after Fury in June 2012. Wilder has been a top 11 Ring ranked heavyweight since 2013 (when he was 30-0 in the pros with 30 KO’s, all inside 4 rounds, over a year before he won the title from 3rd ranked Stiverne) and top 2 or top 3 since 2016.

Since his pro debut as a 23 year old, Wilder has amassed a 92.5% KO ratio across 40 fights (38 wins, 1 draw, 1 TKO loss) against 215+ lbs opponents: the highest percentage of any heavyweight champion in history (despite being outweighed in 37/40 of those fights, often by 20+ lbs and in 22 consecutive fights since May 2012, making Wilder a historically unprecedented P4P heavyweight champion power puncher) uniquely never failed to KO a non-world champion opponent and 18 of the KO’s came in the 1st round. Wilder was even able to land critical right hand bombs (scoring 2 KD’s) on and be given a draw against a rusty and poorly conditioned but extremely fast, agile, long and defensively skilled lineal champion Fury (257 lbs, 27-0) which shows just how skilled he is at landing his Sunday punch. Olympian Breazeale (255 lbs, 20-1) was a tough man who took some knocking out: AJ needed more than 6 rounds and 166 punches for the referee to step in but Wilder ended the fight in the 1st round, virtually with a single punch. If it were so easy to spark Breazeale out then AJ would have done so rather than wear him down with a vast accumulation of blows. The evidence tells us that Wilder's explosive one-punch power is levels above AJ's and combined with his superior speed, length, agility, stamina, durability, confidence, heart, determination, fighting instincts, experience, unconventionality, unpredictability and ease of underestimation, he would be extremely dangerous for virtually any heavyweight in history.

The bookies make Wilder the underdog but still give him a 28.6% chance against Fury in the trilogy: the man who most believe outpointed Wilder while significantly debilitated in the first fight and demolished him in the rematch when fully fit (273 lbs, 29-0-1) both times away from home, though Wilder never came close to quitting, was stopped on his feet while taking and throwing punches and had only been dropped once in his 43 fight pro career prior to Fury 2. It’s interesting to note that AJ has never been close to even odds while Wilder has been on three occasions (Stiverne 1, Fury 1, Fury 2) so the narrative that Wilder fights overmatched opposition relative to AJ is bogus.

Even Wlad Klitschko, who is a huge AJ supporter, highly intelligent and had sparred AJ and Wilder extensively was unable to pick a winner between them due to Wilder possessing “good power in his hands”, being “extremely fast”, longer, more experienced and very unpredictable.

Written pre-25/09/2021