Deontay Wilder all time heavyweight ranking were does he stand?

He didn't distinguish himself in any way really.

His alphabet title means nothing to me beyond the quality of his opposition while defending that strap - which was woeful, awful.

He did get a draw against Fury, but it was a gift draw.

The best fighter he ever beat was Luis Ortiz, who I ranked number 6. The second best fighter he beat was Stiverne, who I had down as the fourth best HW in the world when they fought, so fair enough (for once). Everyone else he ever met in the top five splattered him.

His record against top five heavyweights is 1-1-4, I think? Will have a proper look later.



He's not in the top 80 list of professional heavyweights. Take it from someone who has done a 100. You can probably put him in the 95 region if you want to, but it gets really spongey down there. Personally though, I think he didn't do enough to single himself out as a heavy. There have been literally a hundred guys like him, guys who mostly lost against the elite, did well against the rest, held a strap, had a claim, whatever.

 

No, you're posting nonsense.

I didn't say "every aspect of Wilder's career was exactly the same as a hundred other fighters." What I said was, something veyr specific, which you've ignored, in fact, chopped off while selecting the quote you would respond to:

guys who mostly lost against the elite, did well against the rest, held a strap, had a claim

Wilder didn't do anything in his career that dozens and dozens of other guys did and if there was only one belt he never would have been champion. He's possibly the fourth best fighter of the last ten years. Maybe. He's not all-time materiall. He was fun, sometimes interesting, boxed at a miserable level of competition most of his career, got pretty consistently thrashed when he met truly elite heavies.

 

No, I don't.

 

Yeah, but the WBC rank fighters based on professional relationships and who has paid them (usually to fight for their regional titles). Currently the WBC rank Lawrence Okolie as the number one contender to their strap Do you understand? If Wilder was champion now, he would fight Okolie and you would call it gravy. But the reason Okolie is the number one contender ranked by the WBC is because he gave them money. He paid them when he fought for something called the "WBC Silver Heavy" title, of which he is the proud owner. This payment made him the number one contender. To obtain this he beat Zhan Kossobutskiy KO victim Hussein Muhamed It's beneath pathetic, and it's typical of the WBC, but most champions don't play the pipes with the WBC the way Wilder did. Now, i'm not criticising him for this as a man - he had things he needed to get done, required money and he took that money. That's why he would fight a journeyman like Johann Duhaupas who was a former customer of the WBC even though JD had lost to Erkan Teper a few months before.

Teper would never have got that shot, although he was clearly better than JD, because Teper was an IBF customer, not a WBC customer. You are trying to argue that Wilder should be ranked high because he beat people who paid the WBC. I am trying to argue that he shouldn't because I know those guys don't rank anywhere near any title contendership of any non-corrupt organisation or by any non-******ed fan.

This is what you can't seem to understand: it doesn't matter that Wilder held a belt while he was doing these fights. He could have strung four-hundred defences together but nobody sensible would care if this was the quality of the defences.

And it mostly was.

I tend not to insult him, but also to point out facts.

1 - His record against top five ranked heavyweights (NOT INCLUDING THE WBC) is pretty miserable.

2 - He might be the fourth best fighter of his generation, but he was thrashed by Parker who is still active, so he might yet be fifth.

3 - Fighters who rank no higher than number four in their generation tend not to get on to the top 100. This is just a simple case of maths. Some do though - but when they do, they are the guys who have better records against top-ranked opposition.

There's a difference between a strap-holder and a champion. If you're confused about that difference, yes, that might lead you to rank Wilder high or something, but usually people will be corrected pretty quickly in a place like this and realise the error of their ways.

Wilder was champion of shite. He was as miserable an example of an ABC beltholder as has ever existed, at any weight, who allowed his legacy to be sabotaged by the ABC belt, but he got his money, which is what he was really after - he did what he had to do and I commend him for it.

But pretending it makes him wildly successful, or even a real champion, that's the nonsense. EVERY serious fight fan knows that a belt-holder and a champion aren't the same thing.

Top 140 maybe. Maybe. I'd have to think about it but I probably won't, any more than I would think about all the other guys who got thrashed by the best of their generation. There are just too many of these to meaningfully organise them I think.