Fury's comeback and the Heavyweight division

"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.

 

Waiting to see if it actually goes ahead still

 

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.

 

So Fury doesn't stand a chance in your humble opinion ? Mmmh okay.

 

"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.

 

Can you do another thread where you rate how Francis Ngannou is a top 5 HW fighter?

 

Any boxer with a 'high blood pressure' problem is just blasting D-Bol.

 

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.