"high blood pressure controversy" Perhaps it was a "masking agent controversy". Whatever the case, if Ortiz was borderline medically unfit to fight and on the decline when officially sub-39 and undefeated then the version who fought Joshua-conqueror Ruiz to a close decision 4.5 years and 2 KO defeats later must have been significantly worse, no? "but what's certain is there's nothing on his CV that made him a top 20 lock-in at that point." He was top 5 with all of the "impartial bodies" at the time. Ring, TBRB, PBO. I think TBRB had him at No.3 in 2016, before there was any talk of him fighting Wilder. He was 6th ranked for fight 2. Even Mitch was saying that Ortiz was better than Whyte and Parker after Wilder had beat him. It's impossible to coherently argue that there were "twenty heavyweights" with a better CV than Ortiz in early 2018.
“My boxing essays” I bet that’s a hell of a read. 1000 pages full of naked pictures of Fury and Wilder with a few paragraphs underneath listing Otto Wallins apparent stylistic advantages over Anthony Joshua.
Yes, but my whole point here is that Wilder and Ortiz were in a complete bubble during those years, and wouldn't have been ranked that highly if they stepped out of the bubble and faced other 'top' fighters. Right let's list every heavyweight in the top 10 rankings since 2018 then.. Ring top 10 heavyweights 2018: 1. Joshua 2. Fury 3. Wilder 4. Whyte 5. Ortiz 6. Povetkin 7. Parker 8. Miller 9. Kownacki 10. Pulev 2019 entrants: Andy Ruiz Michael Hnter 2020 entrants: Oscar Rivas Oleksandr Usyk 2021 entrants: Joe Joyce Filip Hrgovic Frank Sanchez 2022 entrants: No new 2023 entrants: Zhilei Zhang Jared Anderson Otto Wallin It's absolutely wild that neither Wilder nor Ortiz have ever beaten any top 10 fighter from those 6 years. And the only time they ever fought any of them was Wilder getting destroyed by a complete shadow of Fury, and a prehistoric Ortiz losing to a Ruiz who had been training in Burger King for 3 years. Oh and Wilder being completely dominated by Parker of course. What has contributed to the bubble is Wilder's main asset and strategy being the KO. Knocking out that many top 40 fighters looks brilliant on paper. With Ortiz I think it was the hype around Cuban boxing at the time. Rigondeaux and Lara were (rightly) being lauded for their skills and how they were showcasing them at world level, and Ortiz was seen as the heavyweight version. The frustrating part being now the bubble has finally burst, Fury has stepped into it. His wins against Wilder making him look as if he's still at the top, despite his whole post weight-gain career clearly being built on sand. He better bloody show up against Usyk this time so we can be done with it and the heavyweight division can finally move on.
Wilder pulled the wool over lots of eyes for year beating no one of note. Fury used him to make a mint and propel himself to the top of the division when in reality he looked awfull since klitschko. The seferi, pianetta, schwarz fiasco followed by going life and death with wallin and ngannou who AJ bowled over with ease. Granted he dealt with whyte very easily, which personally i was surprised at i thought dillian had a chance there. Then Parker showed Wilder up to be what anyone with a pair of eyes has known all along...that Wilder is absolutely useless and was never ever top 10 maybe not top 20. Usyk will wipe the floor with him, let's just hope he gets in the ring so we can put the fury hype to bed alongside Wilder.
I think Fury must have surprised himself how easy he beat Whyte as he did everything he could to get out of fighting him
"Right let's list every heavyweight in the top 10 rankings since 2018 then" What are you talking about? You claimed that Ortiz "definitely" wasn't a lock for top 20 on CV. Name me 20 heavies with a better CV than Ortiz in early 2018. You can't, so you move the goalposts. "getting destroyed by a complete shadow of Fury" No evidence for this. Wilder 2 was one of Fury's best career performances and 2+ years after that Whyte couldn't lay a glove on him. "losing to a Ruiz who had been training in Burger King for 3 years" You mean his whole career. He was about 300 lbs on his debut. "It's absolutely wild that neither Wilder nor Ortiz have ever beaten any top 10 fighter from those 6 years" You mean "any other", your own list has Ortiz at 5. Wilder had two wins over Ortiz, who was ranked 5th/6th in 2018/2019. Aside from that he had three fights with Fury, who was No.1 ranked in fights 2 and 3 and he's only had two fights since February 2020. If you keep fighting a guy who has your number and who batters you twice, that can prevent you from beating other high level opponents by tying you up and shortening your career. There has also been a lot of avoidance on all sides, Ortiz was famously high risk, low reward. Povetkin's handlers admitted they kept him away from Ortiz for this reason, Takam pulled out to go a different direction, Chisora admitted he would never fight Ortiz, Sanchez admitted that he didn't want his charge Joyce in with a post-Wilder 1 Ortiz etc. "top 40 fighters" A metric you are pulling out of your backside. PBO have Wilder beating seven "top 14" fighters before they stopped doing rankings, plus Helenius, plus the Fury draw. While I'm sure they are not perfect, they at least have a system and a level of respect among fans. If I were to claim that say Szpilka (beat Adamek and went on to beat Wach) was a "top 40" or "top 100" or whatever HW then the burden of proof would be on me to justify that. If you were to claim that Wilder never beat a heavyweight who was definitively top 10 on ability/CV other than Ortiz and that most of his title reign was against top 15 to top 20 opponents, that would be a much more plausible claim.
The goalposts haven't moved at all mate, you're getting yourself too hung up with rankings and missing my point. I'm not saying there were definitely 20 fighters with a better CV than Ortiz, I'm saying it's too difficult to tell with any bloody certainty. For what it's worth I think he was right up there. But top 10 at the time of fighting Wilder, I'm not so sure.. We could spend hours comparing CVs and it would get us nowhere, the heavyweight division has been too shallow for too long. You look at other guys outside of that top 10 above like Chisora and Takam, it's a lot of the same thing beating your Tony Thompsons and Malik Scotts. Where are the names I'm supposed to point to and close the argument. Hammer and Jennings who lost every time they stepped up? What bothers me is when you combine a shallow division with the top guys not fighting each other, it leads to the whole thing going down the pan. Any decent fights take years to make, and by the time they do nobody can be sure what they're even watching. Old Ortiz visiting the ER several times due to blood pressure, old Povetkin suffering from covid, Fury completely destroying his body, Ruiz Jr stopping training outside KFC. Even Usyk surely can't be prime anymore. And the worst part.. we're probably about to see history repeat itself. We've had some good heavyweights come through this past few years. Zhang, Joyce, Hrgovic, Sanchez, Bakole etc. By the time any of them get a shot at a world title they'll probably all be past-it and picking up injuries etc. I give it zero chance that any Fury after Klitschko beats them all. But here we are, still waiting for Fury all these years later. And all on the back of how much credit he got for beating Deontay bloody Wilder. Why couldn't Wilder have just fought Parker first. Or Zhang. Or Povetkin. Or Joshua. Or Usyk. Or bloody Wladimir Klitschko.
"you're getting yourself too hung up with rankings" When you claim that Wilder was beating "top 40 guys" aside from Ortiz who "may not have been top 20" it requires some explanation because it's not based on anything even semi-objective or official and looks like an attempt to completely discredit his level of opposition beaten. "But top 10 at the time of fighting Wilder, I'm not so sure" He was top 5 with Ring, PBO and TBRB. He just called out Anderson despite officially being 45 years old. "Why couldn't Wilder have just fought Parker first" Wilder stepped up to top 5 level in 2018. His slow progression was due to a combination of factors: almost 20 when he started, a short amateur career, no American champ for 7.5 years when he won the title, Klitschko domination plus bad early experiences with Wlad in sparring. He could have fought Parker in 2017/2018 but Parker's team preferred the Joshua fight due to risk-reward factors: the Joshua fight was a significantly bigger payday and Joshua had more belts/status. Most contenders and their teams probably thought along those lines, Usyk for instance was always intent on going for Joshua first. Plus teams Joshua and Wilder tried to "marinate" that fight as long as possible. Rematch clauses have played a major role in slowing down the division: Joshua-Ruiz, Joshua-Usyk, Fury-Wilder. There are scheduled to be two fights between Fury and Usyk, which may turn into a trilogy. "Rebuilding" likewise slows things down (Joshua's wins in the last 5+ years are Ruiz 2, Pulev, Franklin, Helenius, Wallin and Ngannou). "Any decent fights take years to make" I think this is excessively pessimistic. There have been a lot of good/interesting/significant fights since Fury dethroned Wlad, far more than there were in the previous era.
Doesn't everyone discredit his level of opposition? At least as far as being considered a world champion goes. The only difference is how much people excuse it. Going by your post you excuse it a lot. Wilder's CV and Ortiz's CV have both aged like milk. Nobody they ever beat went on to do anything other than lose and lose and lose. As I said with Ortiz, it's just a whole lot of nothing. Ortiz passed the eye test, but waited until he was far, far too old before testing himself. Wilder never passed the eye test but had a wicked right hand against opposition of a much, much lower level than any real champion. Every fight that goes by makes it seem less likely that right hand was ever going to trouble any legit world level fighter who wasn't severely compromised.
Wilder v Fury 4?? Gtf... Joshua v Usk 3..gtf Only fight I'd want to see again is AJ v WHYTE but that would only be their 2nd bout and only cause I expect a good knockout or scrap.
What's clear is he landed himself in the hospital emergency room for high blood pressure, and that after giving details of the hospital he was cleared for taking PEDs but fined for not declaring it sooner. It's not a Conor Benn situation trying to get off the hook for nothing and completely muddying the waters. Thankfully it sounded like an easy case for the WBC. It was touch and go whether either fight was going to get signed off on medical grounds. Didn't seem at all like a well man. It always seems a waste when talented boxers wait until they're so damn old before stepping up. Seeing the same thing again with the likes of Joyce and Zhang.
