O¿Is Deontay Wilder the least skilled heavyweight in history?

I know this is a joke, but I always thought prime Foreman had an awful skill set. Wild, inaccurate, horrendous defense. The man just had a good jab and knew how to use his absurd strength to help him land power shots.

 

Not really

 

He's very basic. Even as a B-level champ I find Coetzee overrated.

 

No.

I'm as hard on him as anyone - if you looked at his resume blind, you certainly wouldn't bet money that this was a champion fighter... If anything you'd bet the opposite.


But there's been far, far worse... Even a world-level bumfighter with significant flaws has WAY more skill than the heavyweights at your local boxing gym.

Okay but known fighters? Yep, there's been plenty of journeymen with less skill, for example... And if you exclude those - how far down the list do you go?

 

Wilder was once a very good heavyweight but this forum will have you thinking he was like Johnny Fisher level

 

Dylan Whyte is less skilled than Deontay Wilder

 

You’re right. He did actually. Kudos to Deontay for that. Z was shown more mercy than he deserved imo.

 

I think he could have been a top rated contender in any era. In the era of sub 200 pound heavies, he would look devastating. If people think Bob Satterfield was a terror, imagine Wilder in the 1940s or 50s? Now, the faster and slicker heavies could give him trouble but he would be a force

 

yes, to be a great fighter you need to learn to be a great general. your hands and feet are your soldiers and you need to know how when and where to deploy them. if only one of your soldiers knows how to fight, because hes the only one you use, then you are no general at all.

 

Of course he isn't. What a brainless thread.

 

Wilder is by far the least skilled boxer that I've ever saw at the world class level. He's awful and extremely crude.

 

The least skilled HW ever? As in, the least skilled boxer to have ever fought in the HW division? Absolutely not. There are thousands of fat slobs who don’t know their right foot from their left who got a professional boxing license and who competed at HW. There are plenty of HWs who lose more than they win. Wilder, for all his flaws, is still leaps and bounds more skilled than pretty much every single bum, journeyman, and gate-keeper that have laced up at HW. He’s not even the least skilled champion among the heavies, let alone the least skilled man to ever compete in the division. That would just be insane.

 

Prime Big George had tremendous balance and could cut the ring off better than most, GGG used to remind me of him. And his ability to put all his weight in his punches was second to none, similar to Beterbiev.

Wilder has to spend round after round to figure out the distance and his opponent's movement to find home for his big punch, Foreman could throw massive shots from any angle, any distance.

There's a perception about Foreman being a crude caveman, but that's how Ali made him look. Though Big George's bad game plan didn't help either.

 

Wilder is probably my favorite fighter of this era but I think it would be hard to find a top HW with less skills.
He really had nothing besides the right straight and toughness. Breland tried to get him to use a nice jab. I think he had a nice jab for a little bit but he couldn't use the jab to setup anything. Deontay has almost no combinations. Body shots are really hard to remember.
All this though made him so much fun to watch as a fan, it was almost too much. The first Ortiz fight was just amazing. I remember thinking in that fight "wow Wilder is a bum" when we didn't know he had pretty good toughness. I don't know how the feeling in the first Fury fight when he got the late knockdown can ever be replicated. It got to be too much for me though.
I think in time he will be more and more respected for how unique of a fighter he was.