Wilder's resume

Being able to outbox an opponent often partly rests upon physical advantages. If you land 330 punches on your opponent to 90 while landing with greater accuracy and moving intelligently around the ring, you are outboxing the opponent. If Wilder was really a dreadful boxer then how did he win an Olympic bronze medal before he turned 23 on less than 3 years of boxing experience? How did he beat the HW Olympic gold medalist and world championship silver medalist Chakhkiev? How did 18/22 of his non-walkover wins come by decision? How did he win virtually every round against Stiverne, Arreola and Duhaupas?

Roided Teper had a lot more power than "10 rounds with shot ancient Liakhovich" Ruiz and Ruiz's chin is probably overrated. Parker was his first decent opponent but Parker doesn't knock down anyone Cojanu level and up (aside from an exhausted Whyte) AJ dropped him in 3 and ran in the rematch and Arreola dropped him in 2, almost twice and hurt him multiple times. Ruiz gave Parker a good fight but Chisora at 37.5 by consensus beat Parker in Britain and vulnerable AJ essentially got one-shotted in a blind exchange. My prediction is that if Ruiz gets back to fighting decent opponents (not 40 year old, 18 months inactive Arreola coming off a loss) with some length and footspeed, he's going to take a lot of losses.

Stiverne will often turtle on the ropes and look to counter. He was still in control of his faculties, had not been dropped and in fact dropped King in the first round, being at least even and likely up on the cards. The stoppage was almost universally regarded as being disgraceful, though there have been more blatantly corrupt stoppages I agree. It's still not a good knock on Stiverne's chin, no one thinks he was on the brink of being incapacitated.

Amateur fights are not irrelevant otherwise Loma wouldn't have been fighting for a world title in his 2nd pro fight. Amateur pedigree indicates boxing skill and Stiverne was a superior amateur. The attributes I mentioned that Stiverne has over Ruiz are not everything, Ruiz for example has faster hands but they count for a lot. When Stiverne was knocked down by Rossy he was coming off a long layoff, was badly overweight, had a bad 12 round beating from Wilder and had aged into his mid-late 30's. Wilder then blasted him out in 1 before Stiverne blew up in weight further after another layoff and took top contender Joyce to the 6th at 40. Adamek was a very good cruiser and his fight with Arreola was highly competitive, he also never came close to knocking Arreola out. Austin is billed as being 6'6 with an 80 inch reach so I'm not surprised he gave Stiverne plenty of problems, had Ruiz fought him 5 years before, active, fresher and non-retired I wouldn't be surprised if he outboxed the lighter punching, shorter and stubbier Ruiz and won the fight. Obviously I'm not putting Stiverne in the same class as ATG Wlad, I'd expect him to destroy Austin and either 120-108 or KO Stiverne.

It's fair to slightly favour AJ but Wilder has plenty of advantages over AJ listed in the essay which make it a very close fight. Wilder has not tried to outbox his opponents for a long time, he has just looked for the right hand. The only fights where he was down on the cards shortly before the end were Ortiz 2, Fury 1 and Fury 2: Wilder knew that the American judges would favour his work so he could conserve energy, accumulate damage on the boxer, wait for them to become overconfident and snipe them after they fatigued and slowed down. This makes also Wilder look more vulnerable to being outboxed than he is and is a significant reason why people underestimate him. It's similar to how Takam landed a lot of shots on Joyce but this was part of Joyce's plan to exhaust Takam knowing he could easily take his power and take Takam out in the mid rounds. Fury has not shown the rest of the division a blueprint to beat Wilder because no one else has anything close to Fury's attributes. AJ wouldn't try to run Wilder over, he'd try to outbox him over rounds and he'd find himself eating right hands at some point. How well he took them would determine whether he won the fight.

Parker is a very light puncher and lacks aggression so he was a no hoper in Britain. That being said, Ruiz beating AJ makes me sceptical about whether any AJ opponent who can take and give a decent punch is really a no hoper. Wlad and Povetkin were live dogs, maybe Whyte too. For Wilder, Stiverne was live, Ortiz x2 was live and Fury x2 was live. Overall Wilder was been close to even money 3 times, AJ never has. And Wilder will be a big underdog against Fury in the trilogy.

My point about resume is that we don't know whether Mak can hold a shot (the amateur suggest he can't too well) we don't know if he has decent stamina or if he can win when the opponent puts up serious resistance. Wilder is longer, much faster and more explosive with far more experience. Jonnie Rice (who got stopped at the death by non-puncher McKean) survived to the 7th with superior footspeed, range and a jab: Wilder's going to have time and space to land bombs before Makhmudov can take him out. I reference the bookies a lot because they have been in the predictions business for a long time and have access to more information than anyone else on this forum. More often than not they get things right, though they price so many fights that ofc they make mistakes. Nevertheless, it's useful information as they are far more informed and impartial than boxing fans, who tend to be extremely biased in their judgements.

 

Marvin Hagler is a joke. His best performance is a loss with an ex drugs addict who didn't fight for nearly 3 years since a journeyman 10 lbs lighter.