A younger Povetkin I agree but Povetkin's decline was steeper than Ortiz's. Povetkin at 41.5 looked like a blob of jelly in the ring, at 41 he was clearly shot. At 40 I thought Hunter edged it and Hunter-victim Kuzmin had a close fight with Dawejko, Kuzmin-Bakole was very close. The Hughie fight in Britain was also very close, I had it a draw. AJ's win over 39 year old Povetkin is slightly better than Wilder's over an officially 39 year old Ortiz but Wilder's win over 40 year old Ortiz is better than AJ's over 26 year old Parker, who isn't a southpaw, aggressive or a big puncher and he had the officials against him in Britain. 41 year old inactive defeated Wlad in a war that AJ should have lost is the best win between the two but we can't omit that AJ has by far the worse loss, which devastates AJ's resume. Post-Arreola, it's cast suspicion over Parker and therefore Whyte. Wilder had 10 successful defences, AJ's had 7 and defences are slightly more difficult than standard wins as your opponents have more time to prepare for you than you have for them. Another way of looking at a resume is to ask the question: how many punchers/KO artists has he fought? Takam, Parker, Pulev and Ruiz x2 were not punchers and should have had no chance against big A-side AJ. Washington KO'd Forrest in 2 rounds who went the distance with Hunter in his next fight and went the distance with Zhang and Takam himself, he KO'd Helenius in 8 who Duhaupas KO'd in 6 and who went the distance with Whyte. Arreola KO'd Molina and Mitchell in the 1st round and dropped Ruiz, almost dropped him twice and hurt him multiple times and Stiverne was a big puncher: the only man to canvas-KO a very tough early 30's Arreola. Old Ortiz x2 was a dangerous puncher as well. On the other side of the ledger we have green Whyte, old Povetkin and old inactive Wlad. When you have home and A-side advantage, the most dangerous opponents by far are punchers and KO artists and AJ has fought very few of them, with none close to their primes.
You just proved my point. It's all about BELTS, not resume. Wilder has faced better quality opponents. Joshua has never faced anyone as good as Tyson Fury. Tyson Fury is the #1 heavyweight in the sport. HE would be the best opponent Joshua ever faced. Wilder is fighting him for the THIRD TIME next month. Wilder is fighting the World Champion in his next fight, Joshua is fighting the #10 Ring contender. Wilder fought the #1 Ring Contender for the vacant Ring title in his last fight, Joshua fought a 40-year-old Pulev. The year before that, Joshua spent a whole year fighting Andy Ruiz (because he got dropped four times and quit against the unranked Ruiz in their first meeting.) If Joshua didn't have those three belts (which he WON from Andy Ruiz) his BIG fight next Saturday would be considered a ridiculous mismatch (because it is). Belts didn't make those guys better fighters. They just had belts.
Why don't you just quote your other account? You avoid it like the plague, but if you took the time to consolidate all of the asperger's, the board would be better off. Also, Didn't read.
Using Tyson Fury only works if he actually beat him. Currently Wilder hasn't. No shame in that really, but AJ has beaten ALL of his opponents.
Well, if you fight 40 year olds AND you also fight the best in the whole sport three times, that's different than fighting 40 year olds and Andy Ruiz twice because you quit against him the first time. But "there were three belts on the line" doesn't make Andy Ruiz a better notch in your belt.
No, because if Anthony Joshua floored Tyson Fury twice and fought him to a draw ... it would be the biggest thing he ever accomplished. If Joshua floored Fury twice and drew with him, nobody would be saying "The Joseph Parker decision win was so much better. Or was it the decision win over Andy Ruiz?" (LOL) LEVELS.
Wilder's competition since 2018 has been excellent, but his two best wins are Ortiz which is bad. He just doesn't have much variety, but no rational person could accuse him of soft scheduling the past three years.
When people leave out a two knockdown draw to the Current undefeated WORLD champion in one of the biggest heavyweight title fights this century when they discuss Wilder they are going out of your way to try to drag him down. Wilder defended his WBC title against Fury TWO times. Not once. Like Wilder ... Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield, Jack Johnson, Tommy Burns, Chris Byrd, Hasim Rahman, etc. all made successful heavyweight title defenses with draws. And NONE of them (except Wilder) dropped their challenger twice in those fights. When you list Wilder's successful title defenses, his 12-round, two-knockdown draw in his first defense against Fury is at the top.
Wilder dropped Fury twice and successfully defended his title against him. Made two defenses after that, then defended against Fury a second time. You may not give him credit, but he gets credit for a two-knockdown successful defense. Again, if Anthony Joshua fought Tyson Fury next and dropped Fury twice and it ended in a draw, nobody would pretend that fight never occurred. People would view it as an enormous accomplishment by Joshua. Nobody would say "ignore that."
One factor that helped Fury was that despite the cut, he was dominating the fight. If Fury had been getting battered then it may well have been stopped, there would at least have been a meritocratic case for it but Wallin wasn't able to outfight a visually impaired Fury. Contrary to conventional wisdom and given the context, I see Wallin as one of Fury's best wins and a good performance against Whyte will bolster this viewpoint. Wallin's no worldbeater but neither was Chisora, yet he twice went life and death with pre-Povetkin Whyte. Wallin was doing far better against Fury than Chisora was even before the cut and Wallin has many positive attributes. Whyte has been overhyped based on being an early AJ victim with some ability who could be manufactured into a domestic PVV star, provided he was fed a diet of past prime names and contentious officiating, with every win bolstering AJ's resume indirectly. Wallin is no paint dry Parker either; he's not going to let Whyte rough him up.
Theres a lot of truth to this. People want to call these guys bums but really there's not a whole lot separating the majority of heavyweights outside of the top 5. Spectacularly knocking out all but one of them is no easy feet
Wilders best win is an old Ortiz on his way out. You just wrote war and peace discrediting old fighters on the way out. You made the argument quite well imo.
