An unbiased look at AJ's top 10 opponents

Ortiz is extremely underrated on this forum, where the conventional wisdom is that he's no better than 12 loss journeyman Chisora.

Ortiz TKO7'd Jennings in Dec 2015, who had gone 12 with Wlad in his previous fight and who years later gave Joyce a very competitive fight in Britain. Jennings was 6th Ring ranked with a victory over 9th ranked Perez when Ortiz became the first man to stop him.

Ortiz's wins over gatekeepers and journeymen compare well with the likes of Rivas, Joyce, Whyte, Yoka, Parker, Ajagba, Pulev, Takam and Chisora. He'd never got a controversial decision, had never been dropped in 30 fights and never lost to a B/C level opponent. In 2019, Abel Sanchez said that a post-Wilder 1 40 year old Ortiz was too dangerous for his charge: robbed SHW gold medalist Joyce and even Hearn said recently that "no one wants to fight Ortiz" and this is an officially 42.5 year old Ortiz with 2 KO defeats.

There aren't too many highly skilled and experienced unbeaten southpaw power punchers around, making Ortiz extremely awkward and dangerous and thus a very good scalp. Heavyweight champs in the past virtually never fought non-bummy southpaws (Holyfield being the exception and he lost 3/4 fights against them). Joe Louis openly said he'd never fight one.

You can put 41 year old 17 months inactive Wlad above him and maybe 39 year old Povetkin at a stretch but not a green Whyte or toothless Parker.

 

The fact that Sanchez (an expert with knowledge of what's going on in the gyms) didn't want to put his 33 year old iron-chinned, extremely well conditioned de-facto SHW gold medalist 7-0 pro in with an officially 40 year old Ortiz coming off a KO loss to Wilder tells me that Ortiz was very dangerous. The fact that Hearn said that no one wants to fight a 42.5 year old, 2 KO losses Ortiz also gives me an indication of how heavily avoided he was before he was 40+. It's not comparable to the irrational fanboy claim that 17 months older, 17 months inactive, defeated in his last fight Wlad fighting as the B-side away from home was better than the active, 22 win streak home/A-side Wlad who had just signed a 5 fight extension to his TV contract in Germany.

Resume is one factor in judging how good a fighter is but it's far from the be all and end all for many reasons. The judgement of a resume is also highly subjective: some people don't seem to care if a fighter loses, has A-side/home advantage, gets KO'd by sub-par opponents or gets a gift points win, personally I think all of these things devalue a resume. By many relevant metrics, 28-0 Ortiz had a better resume than almost all of his rival contenders.

 

Very amusing! But this series isn't about writing absurd polemics or fluff jobs.

 

Yes. My post on Wilder will be objective.

 

Officially 40.25 year old Luis Ortiz in mid 2019 wasn't undefeated 37.75 year old Luis Ortiz in late 2016. That would have been an extremely dangerous fight for 17-0 AJ and could have easily derailed his career going into the Wlad fight, so I understand why it was avoided.

They could have fought Wilder in 2018 if they were willing to compromise on the terms but it didn't pass risk-reward. Better to fill up Wembley against less dangerous contenders, narrow the experience gap and age the older Wilder out before a big risk and potential cash out.

Similar story with Fury but they weren't willing to offer 50-50 before he beat Wilder.

They definitely didn't expect to slip up against late sub Ruiz, which scuppered the Wilder fight. They also didn't expect to slip up against mandatory Usyk (though they knew it could well happen) which scuppered the Fury fight.

AJ desperately needs a win over Usyk (his first top opponent below the age of 39, if not 41) to salvage his legacy because the likes of Whyte, Parker and Ruiz haven't really separated themselves from a prime Chisora.

 

Objective, not absurdist humour.