Wilder’s age has absolutely nothing to do with his lack of boxing ability. His lack of boxing skills is actually quite shocking. Like many, I suspected a good boxer or two would leave him exposed, but the man is like a terrible vocalist, without his backing singers or auto-tuning. I’m like, “What the…” With regards to Joshua, I always gave Wilder a punchers chance, with the assumption that Joshua would outbox him. However, the gulf in boxing ability is seriously drastic. Worse than I thought.
I think Wilder would have always presented some degree of threat because of his punching power and AJ not being the most elusive or iron chinned guy out there, but yeah, AJ was a more complete boxer and out of the guys Wilder has faced only Zhang probably hits harder, so he should have been the favourite had they fought at any point.
Wilder avoided Whyte for years who was his mandatory if he didn't even fancy fighting Whyte then you can bet he didn't fancy his chances vs Joshua.