It's funny that you've rubbished wins over Spinks, Tucker and Holmes, whilst you're hyping a win over Ortiz at the same time.
Importantly, the 1980s WBA “strap exchange” took place higher up in the division than Wilders dubious “reign”. Take away the titles. Wilder and the 1980s guys were all nothing more than contenders.
I'm still waiting for these guys to come forward with a stylistic breakdown etc. We're almost at 25 pages now, and all we've had is that Wilder would definitely have beaten all of the 80's guys, based on the fact that he has better stats on paper.
Both are creatures of fiction, but so is time traveling 2021 Wilder. We are all forced to pick and choose which factors to fudge, is what I'm saying. "If you want to get technical" (to channel Larry Holmes), a Gen-X-or-earlier Wilder who grows to maturity in the 80s might fail to live up to his potential just because of random chance alone. Look at the gap between genetically identical fighters like Henry Cooper and his brother, whose life circumstances were more similar to each other than 2021 Wilder's and 1981 Wilder's lives would be. If Wilder was born in the 1960s or 50s, he also wouldn't have met the same woman or had the same child with her, unless you're teleporting her back in time as well and micromanaging their lives to ensure Wilder meets her and gains parenting immunity from drugs, food, and all the other social pressures that appear to have made the 80s such a uniquely bad era of wasted talent.
Those sorts of thoughts are frowned on in boxing24 Classic. No coked out Wilder, no steroids Marciano, and no mentally stable Golota.
Pretty much. Again I'm not trying to say wilder would be some amazing long reigning WBA champ in the 80's easily destroying every single one of these guys. But I do think based on consistency, discipline, and his x factors of ridiculous power and athleticism, he likely has one of the longer reigns. It really isn't rocket science. Athletes who take their craft seriously and are in shape will do fairly well in other eras-- especially a notoriously weak era like the early 80's heavies where the championship changes hands every 3-6 months and most people are out of shape or on drugs on and/off. The pedigree for the 80's guys is simply fighting each other. That's where the main problem lies. Wilder only has 2 world level wins and a bunch of c level guys, while the 80's guys beat 1-2 of each other and lose to each other, hence why it gets very murky attempting to figure out who is clearly better. I will say this tho, wilder's career isn't over but he had less egregious losses (the only ones being to fury who is formidable h2h) so on that basis he is statistically less likely than his peers to drop the ball.
Nah. I've seen people willing to discuss all of those possibilities. You've seen the same thing earlier in this thread, where a guy discussed what 80s style matchmaking would have done to Wilder's unbeaten record. But if you want to keep Wilder identical to his actual incarnation, then Wilder-in-a-temporal-bubble with 2010s strength and conditioning coaches magically gets the same promotional advantages he did in his own era. He can pick and choose which Don King fighters to face (if any), dodges the issues that actual 80s fighters faced, and has a similar title reign fighting opponents who are as close to identical to his modern lineup as possible.
I'm not sure I agree with this, since different eras will produce different types of people. Put it another way: Why do you believe that the fighters in the 80s behaved the way they did? They weren't (as far as I know) some genetically unusual population that was uniquely susceptible to taking drugs or being undermotivated. They were only one or two generations removed from us. So why did they act in a way that made the 80s a weaker era than now?
John when I ask Question that does not mean that I think YOU believe whatever it is I'm asking about. It was an open question on a topic relating to your comments about fury being a beached whale. I was asking anyone really, the question of why people are inconsistent about whether Fury's enormous weight is a good or bad thing. Maybe I should have clarified that but not everything in a thread is a personal accusations or attempting to put words in your mouth. Now to address the weight/knockdowns: -Fury being in shape or out of shape is a completely separate issue from if Fury got careless and overconfident in the middle of a fight and got dropped. Was Ali out of shape when he got overconfident and dropped by Cooper? No, so it's an irrelevant factor. -Fury was VERY confident at the stare down, literally calling wilder a you know what and stormed out of his corner immediately. He was then caught off guard by the spearing jabs to the body and Wilder looked good for a while. Wilder actually attempting to try something different and surprising fury for a few rounds does is not proof fury was out of shape/unmotivated/etc. -Fury did not gas in the 3rd fight. Yes he got dropped twice but he was very game, determined, and mentally as tough as he ever was. There is nothing whatsoever to indicate he was worse than the 2nd fight. The logical conclusion, in my mind, is that Wilder really wasn't feeling himself in the 2nd fight for whatever reason. Combine that with Fury's change in tactics and it really isn't all that hard to figure out. Wilder can't fight backing up, looked gassed and out of it from the very beginning, and fury was more active and determined with a new trainer. -the last part is a little bit weird. Wilder definitely took his chances. He went out on his shield and tried to take fury out with every fiber of his being. I don't even see how that can be disputed. He simply isn't a great boxer and finisher. Shavers was absolutely trying to take out Holmes, he failed because he was the worse boxer. Samuel Peter ate tons of nasty shots and never stopped coming forward attempting to take Wladmir out. He didn't lose because of incompetence or lack of heart, he simply wasn't good enough and couldn't make the necessary adjustments.
Right, so I think I agree with a lot of this. First, yes, there were elite and non-elite contenders back then, just as there are now. So the question becomes whether the elite contenders faced each other back then, and whether Wilder faced the elite contenders in his own era. Second, I don't think that what you're referring to in your Point 1 is about their facing each other creating a circular argument. Rather you seem to be saying that their facing each other (while nice) is irrelevant because of their inconsistency as measuring sticks for each other. That's not really a circularity problem; it's a problem of consistency. If they faced each other without drug and motivation problems, but had the exact same results, it would presumably mean that the division was just really competitive in the 80s.
Speaking for myself, I actually did try to do a break down of the clash of styles in regards to Wilder vs Thomas specifically. But the person I was debating with continuously refused to engage and I believe only 1 person actually addressed what I said. I have said on multiple occasions that if wilder brings the jab he used against stiverne and doesn't blow through his gas tank, he'd be a major problem h2h for some of these guys.
Well we know the life story for some of these guys. Biggs had a messed up life with little support. Thomas kind of just hung with the wrong crowd and couldn't kick the habit. Cooney had an abusive dad, it goes on and on. The thing is, other fighters in other divisions weren't nearly as bad as the 80's heavies for some reason. The fab 4 fought in the same decade and they weren't strung out on drugs or showing up with D cups. I think Leonard even admitted he tried cocaine but managed to keep himself focused and had a stellar career and didn't let it control his life. Duran had eating/partying issues, but again, managed to keep it together and is now regarded as a top 25 ATG. What does that say about the heavies? It is pretty alarming. Furthermore, most notably, Holmes, Bruno, Ruddock, and a handful of other heavies did NOT end up with wasted careers and in rehab. It's a bizarre era.
When I say circular reasoning it's because they don't have any elite wins outside each other regardless of if they were in shape or drug free at the time. Factoring in the drug/weight motivation issues and it makes things worse because for some of the alphabet guys their title winning effort was against a compromised opponent. For instance, Tubbs beating a fat sluggish Page who didn't make a great deal of effort. Dokes winning his title in an extremely controversial fashion via premature stoppage. Or Smith knocking out the supposedly unmotivated Witherspoon who made no effort. What was smith's best win after this? A stiff, suspect chinned, rookie version of Bruno? A fight he won at the last second after trailing on the cards? The trail gets cold after that. Tucker winning a trinket vacant belt over Douglas who was often chubby and lacked motivation, yada yada. I think it's a little bit of both. It shows a lack of consistency but it also shows that attempting to gauge how good any of them are is difficult. Circular because the only thing separating them from contenders such as Williams, Tillis, or Ruddock is that they kept passing a trinket belt back and forth like hot potato. Because for some of the 80's guys the only reason they're even in the conversation is because of a sole "good" win over another guy with a dubious record who is considered a "good" fighter for holding onto one of the aforementioned trinket titles. Somehow the trinket holder is better than his contender peers automatically for having that so called "elite win" that separates him from other guys in the 80's. As for the question of facing elite contenders, I think for the most part you can say the 80's guys did at least face each other. Not a whole lot of ducking. Besides consistency, the other problem was that they didn't beat an awful lot of contenders either if we're being honest. So it's kind of strange to criticize wilder for having a bunch of szpilkas and areolas and Brezeale's on his record but for some 80's guys, their resumes don't have very many of these caliber of opponents either, let alone a consistent somewhat long "title" reign.
Which contenders should the 80s ABC guys have faced instead of each other that would have given you a better read on the era?
I'm with Glass. I think it was really important to note that Wilder isn't the one-trick pony so many here think he is, a fact that I confirmed myself when I rewatched the Stiverne fight last night. He has a fine jab and more than a few extremely useful tricks in his toolbox. I believe Wilder would have done just fine against guys like Berbick (I actually believe he would have knocked the Berb out), Coetzee (pretty positive on a ko there, too), Dokes (who, let's face it, really didn't have too much of a chin) and quite possibly Smith and Page. When we start discussing Witherspoon, Tubbs, and Tucker...a trickier set there. Witherspoon had a LOT of power in that overhand right, and a really good jab. It's true, Smith blew him out...but if I remember correctly Tim didn't really get hurt like that throughout the rest of his 80s career, I think he just got caught good and never recovered during that specific fight...it happens. Tubbs couldn't take the Wilder right flush for long but was a fine boxer and could have pulled the victory off. Tucker would have been, besides Fury, the best boxer Wilder ever took on and could definitely have beat him imo. Weaver is a wild card imo. He had the power to beat the crap out of Deontay, but his chin was about average, maybe a little better than that but not much.
