When did/when will Wilder be at his peak? For me it was when he fought Fury the first time. I think his performance was very underrated. He was lightning quick, kept his power the entire fight and managed to land a few times on an incredibly evasive Fury. He seemed to regress after that fight, abandoning on improvements early on in the fight that could well have turned things in his favour.
Wilder did not regress after the First Fury fight the difference was that Fury was in much better shape for the rest of the trilogy fights. Hard to say if/when Wilder has even had his prime,Wilder does what Wilder does with his power and that’s brutally KOs opponents. Fury’s the only man to beat Wilder and even he had to get off the floor numerous times himself .
Having the Ortiz 1 fight under his belt helped experience-wise and in improving his sharpness but the same could be said of the experience against Fury 1. Getting rid of Breazeale in 1 was very impressive. He also took much less damage in the Ortiz rematch and won a few rounds earlier.
It's hard to say. His competition has varied quite wildly in his career, going from bums to top tier fighters, and he's often looked quite poor against the former and good against the latter. He's also sort of looked like he was slowing down at points in his career then blasted out a first round knockout in his very next fight. I'd say he's actually probably still near prime even now, at least as far as his style goes. His KO of Helenius (I'm assuming it was legit) forced me to eat quite a bit of humble pie.
Wilder is a guy who really never made any improvements. I'd say his peak was somewhere around 2015 when he won the WBC title. The only change he made after winning the title was he didn't windmill hurt opponents as much. He fell in love with the one punch KO, and regressed to what he is now. The only other attempt at improving was the half round in Fury III where he tried using the jab to the body.
"Wilder is a guy who really never made any improvements" If this were literally true it would mean that the Wilder who beat Ethan Cox straight off winning his bronze medal was ready to beat 30-0 Ortiz and draw with 27-0 Fury. Wilder's team certainly didn't think so, or they wouldn't have fed him 31 more 4 round guys for more than 6 years pre-Stiverne. It would mean that all the sparring with Wlad, Haye and everyone else counted for nothing. 40 fights of pro experience meant nothing. Having an expensive team of professionals for roughly a decade meant nothing. 15 years pro experience and counting (having started boxing relatively late at 19) has meant nothing. Sparring and fighting top fighters makes you a better fighter, at least if you're not physically or mentally compromised. The Wilder who had drawn with Fury was a better fighter than the Wilder who beat Stiverne and had never been past 4 rounds previously.
I definitely think Wilder made a lot of improvements in his career, but they weren't necessarily in the obvious ways we see other fighters improve like greater polish, increased skillset etc. Wilder basically always had a very good straight right, and over the years he's honed his accuracy and timing to the point that he can make that punch land against almost anyone with devastating results, even when he's being battered to an inch of his life.
I don’t think he’s regressed physically much or at least we haven’t seen evidence of it yet. Technically, he’s stopped progressing since the Arreola fight. Until that point he was slowly adding some skills. After that he probably started ignoring Breland and became a right straight spammer.
In most of Wilder's first 32 fights he could KO his opponents (usually in the 1st round) without being touched, so it's hard to assess his skillset relative to later fights when he fought much better opposition (and not just Fury or Ortiz: Arreola was levels and levels above Ethan Cox and the like). It's a pretty extreme claim that a 23 year old greenhorn Wilder didn't have an inferior jab, hook, uppercut, footwork, inside game, defence etc. than 33 year old 8 defence Wilder.
Course he kept his power in Fury I. The fight barely had any action. Regarding the question, Stiverne I maybe? Gradually Wilder started becoming more and more reliant on finding that “shot” than boxing.
How could you think the Helenius fight would ever end any other way than it did? When was Helenius ever known for either good defense or a good chin?
