How Long Does Wilder Last, As An 80 's Belt Holder?

The thing about very young champs like Tyson is that they can only blow through the competition if the best men in their 30's are all relatively poor. Experience counts for a lot in boxing and especially in the heavyweight division, where styles/body types are most diverse and the penalty for mistakes is so high. Fighters also haven't had nearly enough time to hone a complete skillset at that age. If a 19 year old who has never had a competitive professional fight can beat all of the best guys, the chances are that something is seriously wrong.

 

We're in a thread where we're comparing Wilder with 80s alphabet champs, and you're bashing Wilder's reign?

Wilder fought in 13 consecutive WBC Heavyweight Title fights.

WBC January 2015 Ratings
http://www.boxnews.com.ua/en/ratings/WBC/All/01-2015
Bermane Stiverne (24-1-1) - #Champion

WBC May 2015 Ratings
http://wbcboxing.com/ratings/WBC_RATINGS_MAY_2015.pdf
Eric Molina (23-2) #9

WBC August 2015 Ratings
http://wbcboxing.com/ratings/WBC_RATINGS_AUGUST_2015.pdf
Johann Duhaupas (32-2) #12

WBC December 2015 Ratings
http://wbcboxing.com/ratings/WBC-RATINGS-DECEMBER-2015.pdf
Artur Szpilka (20-1) #8

WBC June 2016 Ratings
http://www.wbcboxing.com/ratings/WBC-RATINGS-JUNE-2016.pdf
Chris Arreola (36-4-1) #9 (late sub for #1 Povetkin - who failed his prefight PED test)

WBC February 2017 Ratings
http://wbcboxing.com/ratings/WBC-RATINGS-FEBRUARY-2017.pdf
Gerald Washington (18-0-1) #8

WBC October 2017 Ratings
http://wbcboxing.com/ratings/WBC-RATINGS-BAKU-CONVENTION-2017.pdf
Bermane Stiverne (25-2-1) #1

WBC February 2018 Ratings
http://wbcboxing.com/ratings/WBC_RATINGS_FEBRUARY_2018.pdf
Luis Ortiz (28-0) #3

WBC November 2018 Ratings
http://www.maurowbc.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/WBC-RATINGS-NOVEMBER-2018.pdf
Tyson Fury (27-0) #3

WBC May 2019 Ratings
https://wbcboxing.com/ratings/WBC-RATINGS-MAY-2019.pdf
Dominic Breazeale (20-1) #4

WBC November 2019 Ratings
http://www.maurowbc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WBC-Ratings-November-2019.pdf
Luis Ortiz (31-1) #3

WBC February 2020 Ratings
https://britishboxingnews.co.uk/blogs/wbc-release-their-february-2020-world-rankings
Tyson Fury (29-0-1) #1

WBC August 2021 Ratings
https://wbcboxing.com/mailing/2021/ratings_pdf/WBC_Ratings_AUGUST_2021.pdf
Tyson Fury (30-0-1) (#Champion)

Wilder goes 10-2-1 with 9 kos over those 13 fights ... an excellent record in title fights.

His opponents' combined records in those 13 consecutive title fights were 343-14-6.

(MIKE WEAVER alone had nearly that many loses - to guys like Rodney Bobick and Leroy Jones - when Thomas fought him.)

Run off 13 straight fights from any of those alphabet champs in the 80s. Show where ALL their opponents were rated in the WBA ratings/or WBC ratings during that stretch. Show they stack up in terms of quality opposition.

Back up what you're saying with anything other than your "opinion."

Post away.

 

Ortiz beat the crap out of Jennings, who lost 8-4 to Wlad and beaten top ten Perez and undefeated Szpilka. Jennings was top 5.

Ortiz also washed Scott, who I don’t think had been down on the cards in his career, and washed Hammer, who was top 20 and had beaten other decent Euro guys like undefeated Teper.

He also made Kayofe look like a tough man contestant and was a known am. Ortiz wasn’t a hype job

 

If you erase that he was the first guy to put away Arreola, who also happened to be around his peak for that fight, right before fighting Wilder, then you’ve made a great point.

If you erase that his 12 rounder record is better than George Foreman’s, you’ve made an even better point.

 

See Mike Weaver and all the journeymen he lost to.

Arreola would've been a champ for a fight or two in the "WBA world" in the 1980s. He'd have crushed a couple (or just ONE - since none of them crushed a couple) of those 80s beltholders ... like he crushed Jameel McCline (after McCline nearly beat Peter and Ruiz).

So would Adamek. He'd have been a WBA heavyweight champ for one fight. Maybe two. The Adamek-Arreola fight and Adamek-Chambers was a WBA Alphabet heavyweight title fight in the 80s.

So would Glazkov and Szpilka. Szpilka's win over Adamek, Glazkov's win over Adamek, those were WBA Alphabet heavyweight title fights in the 80s.

So would Helenius and Chisora and Washington and Duhaupas. Helenius and Chisora's fight would've been a WBA heavyweight title fight back in the 80s. Washington and Duhaupas' wins over Robert Helenius would've been WBA heavyweight title fights in the 1980s. So would Helenius and Kownacki. That's what they looked like. That's the level. That's what they were.

All those fights where ranked guys would win, then lose, win, lose with no consistency ...

I mean WHO fought for the WBA heavyweight title that entire decade and never won a belt?
Quick Tillis? Because nobody could string more than two defenses together.

The 2010s just had Wlad and Vitali and Wilder ... some of the longest-reigning champs in decades with crushing power. So all those guys didn't get to become "beltholders" in the 2010s like guys their level did in the 1980s.

Because Wilder and the Klitschkos were a level up and didn't turn the belts over every other time they defended them.

 

There is an unfounded but persistent belief that if a top fighter loses to an Oliver McCall, a Ross Puritty or an Andy Ruiz then they must be quality opponents. The fact is that pretty much every long-reigning modern champion of note has been upset by a man or men regarded at the time as journeymen or fringe contenders. Wilder is the lone exception to this rule, which many people find frustrating. The Ruiz fiasco should have taught them that any opponent can potentially be dangerous at HW, even if they are sub 6 foot with super middleweight arms and frequently go the distance with chinny journeymen. If Ruiz had the power to destroy AJ's equilibrium with a single shot, Chris Arreola and Gerald Washington (KO'd Jerry Forrest in 2 and Helenius in 8) certainly do. If journeyman Ross Puritty could grind young Wlad down, the far superior Johan Duhaupas would have definitely been capable of doing so. If McCall and Rahman can starch Lewis with one shot, Stiverne and Ortiz could do so as well.

The thing is though that they have made up their minds about Wilder and can't ever admit they're wrong, so if he'd lost to one of the jokers that the others lost to it would be seen as a huge black mark rather than a badge of honour.

 

I'm not convinced you have a point. Indeed, I'm not even sure you know anything about the events you seem to be parodying.

 

No, I'm not saying that Wilder's opposition was inferior because he beat them. That would be a strange claim unless I had independent reasons to think Wilder was a bad fighter. (If you really want, I suppose I *could* make that argument just for fun, since short title reigns might reflect a very competitive talent pool, but it was never an argument that I actually made.)

What I actually pointed out is that facing the best opposition available -- win or lose -- gives a better picture of a guy's skill than blowing out weaker opponents. The alphabet guys fought each other. If the alphabet titlists of the 80s weren't the best fighters of their own era, then who on Earth was?

 

I'm also a bit confused with everyone talking about title defenses and championship reigns. There was only one champ in the early 80s, and it was Larry Holmes. None of the alphabet guys were champions. Nor was Wilder a heavyweight champion defending a lineal title. These are all contenders we are talking about -- Wilder perhaps a better and more highly regarded contender in the 2010s division than most.

 

This is one of my biggest issues with Fury and the way people post about him.

They gloss over the two knockdowns in the first wilder fight due to fury being incredibly fat and needing to lose a bunch of weight, stay focused, etc.

But then there is praise for Fury ballooning up to 270+ in the rematches and how he imposed his size. And despite Fury having long since shaken off the ring rust, drugs, alcohol, etc, he still got dropped twice again in the 3rd fight.

What gives? Why is being obese an excuse for one fight and not the others? How is a frowned upon quality of fury one minute then a reason to praise him the next minute?

 

This is what I'm getting out of this conversation.

I think what double chin is getting at is that the alphabet guys were fighting other alphabet guys and failed to ever string together some wins. They couldn't defend their titles to save their lives.

The comparison is that Wilder defended against WBC ranked guys and was successful for a fairly long time. The infamous 80's heavies in question were doing the same thing, only less successful technically. They were fighting other WBA guys while Holmes was lineal/IBF and occasionally taking out guys ranked by ring magazine. Basically, the 80's heavies we're good because...they fought other 80's heavies...who were good opponents to have in your resume because they fought other 80's heavies in the WBA/Don King stable. See how that works? It's circular logic. Very few of the alphabet guys have standout wins outside of each other and kept losing to each other.

The 80's heavies would literally have like 1-2 good wins against each other then lose the title, go on a bender, show up again and beat a few fringe guys, maybe win 1 more fight against another WBA guy (whose career looked just as bad as theirs if not worse), etc. I think that's why this thread is being so hotly debated.

If you're going to dismiss Wilder's reign as him just being a contender beating even weaker contenders since he wasn't lineal or unified, then the same would logically apply to WBA guys who aren't fighting Holmes (the real top dog of the 80's) and his contenders.

 

I get where you're coming from, but aside from Holmes and the ABC guys, who else was there who was better in the 80s?

I agree it's fairly circular to claim that they're all the top guys for beating other top guys, but that's how ratings systems are supposed to work in a competitive division. We encounter the same problem any time we compare eras and ask who fighter XYZ beat among ranked opponents.

Unless someone argues that all the 80s contenders aside from Holmes would be fringe contenders today, I guess. Which was what @McGrain suspected was going to ultimately happen if we kept going down that road.

 

What if a handful of future and former champions lose to the guy?