How does Otto Wallin fare against these AJ opponents?

He showed that in the Parker fight too, he still lost. Ruiz will avoid any decent fighter with footspeed, especially footspeed and length, especially footspeed, length and southpaw stance.

 

And I'll see the difference between a man coming to fall on the floor and a man coming to fight.

Babic did a far better job on Shawndell Winters than Parker did. Move him up to world level asap!

 

"Motivation wasn't the issue"

Wallin's weight for Breazeale: 240.25
Wallin's weight for Sokolowski: 253.25

The Whyte fight falling through obviously had an effect on Wallin's motivation. Are you taking a consistent line: is Michael Hunter unskilled because he drew with Jerry Forrest? Hunter actually went life and death in that fight too, sustained a lot of punishment, whereas Wallin took virtually none against Sokolowski.

"His layoff was less than a year, tons of fighters have had longer layoffs with Covid."

His layoff was 350 days. It's irrelevant that many fighters have had longer layoffs, they've often been rusty when they returned. In the buildup Wallin talked about the importance of staying active so he was obviously concerned about getting more ring time.

There is also the playing possum angle: many thought Fury had no chance against Wilder based on the Pianeta fight but it was actually a glorified sparring session (Pianeta was even an ex-sparring partner of Fury). Looking great against these journeymen would be counterproductive as Wallin was struggling for notable opponents after the Breazeale win.

But really, it goes to show how desperate people are to discredit Fury. If Wallin had been KO'd by a bum or went life and death then there would at least be interesting questions. Until the likes of Whyte stop ducking Wallin, the best evaluations we have of Wallin's abilities are the spirited 12 round loss to Fury and the comfortable 12 round win over Breazeale.

 

Wallin's wide UD win over Breazeale away would be the 2nd best win on Chisora's 44 fight record.

Fury didn't take Wallin seriously, thought he was just another Tom Schwarz, didn't have much relevant film to study, lost too much weight and got cut badly from the 3rd round but 6'5, 236 lbs southpaw Wallin showed skill, toughness, determination, endurance and more athleticism than Chisora or Whyte. It was also a huge step up in levels and he did far better than expected, so he carries that experience and confidence going forward.

I agree that Wallin should stop calling out Fury and Wilder I don't consider Martin, Ortiz and Whyte to be big guns anymore so I don't see why he shouldn't call them out but they haven't wanted to fight him. Chisora said recently that he doesn't want to fight southpaws, Takam may well be retired now, Helenius recently turned down a fight with Hughie and is with PBC. Getting good fights can be very difficult as a high risk low reward fighter.

 

So why did Whyte (who had home and A-side advantage, wanted an activity fight before Fury, wanted to get one over on Fury and preferred not to be seen as a coward) blatantly avoid him then?