This content is protected Deontay Wilder may not be the most technically sound nor most skilled fighter, but he is tall, rangy, and a devastating striker who has an intimidating aura. Some fighters crumble mentally and physically after a few jabs from Wilder, and thats with boxing gloves, imagine 4 oz MMA gloves. If you give Wilder 1 year training with the best coaches (BJJ, wrestling, learning TDD, kicks, grappling etc), how do you think he would do in the HW division in the UFC? Can he be champion? Can he knock out guys like Stipe or DC? Would he outbrawl and outpower Francis Ngannou? Or will he be a bum like Greg Hardy
Well if a guy with garbage skills, overweight obese Derrick Lewis can win lots and lots of UFC fights and earn a title shot then there is a decent chance that Wilder could do the same if he has the desire to learn the relevant skills such as good take down defence. His powerful right hands might hurt a few faces.
I would say that he'd do badly. He's not exactly the sharpest knife in the box to begin with, and MMA would require him to learn a ton of new skills that he's never seen before. If Breland can't get him to box fundamentally soundly after how many years, does anybody really believe Wilder will pick up kickboxing, wrestling, BJJ, Muat Thai etc in a year? Nahhhh ... He could fight Ngannou in a boxing match though. That I'd pay to see.
The top guys in the HW division might be too skilled for Wilder, but outside of the top 5, theres not much talent. And Wilder has the reach and power advantage in most cases. But yeah he will probably get taken down or killed with leg kicks. Would still be interesting to watch. Maybe someone more skilled like Anthony Joshua or Tyson Fury would do better
Wilder could, assuming he'd train seriously, try to become one of those Semmy Schilt types relying on their reach or become pretty dangerous himself at the kicking game. He's running out of time though, and if he thinks MMA is going to be easier on a newbie (and old) fighter than boxing he will get a surprise.
If he takes the same route Claressa Shields (And Holly Holm before her but her transition was slightly easier as she had some amateur kickboxing experience) is doing he could be decent. She's taking 2 years to train MMA before she debuts at a lower level promotion and then fights her way up to challenge for the title of that organization and then hopefully get signed to the ufc and fight big names there. but honestly, Wilder punches off balance a lot and he can't afford to slip in the octagon and get crushed on the ground. One year is honestly not enough to learn Muay Thai BJJ and Wrestling which are all extremely important aspects of MMA. Wilder could crush a few cans with that but no one who's in the top 15 in the UFC or in other promotions IMO.
He can do well vs other mma newbies. After three years he fights in the ufc then fourth year for the title, might win , who knows.
If Fury learnt takedown defence and a bit of grappling he'd be unstoppable These MMA heavyweights have no gas tanks and all the good wrestlers are tiny compared to Fury. 2/3 years of training & Fury could be near champion level. Stipe would be old AF by then also. You see the state of the rioded hulks they had like Overeem and that wrestling, still much naturally smaller men than Fury. Fury's stamina & natural size would make him a real force. No doubt all of these guys would focused on leg kicks and takedown. Fury is so long though that he could punish leg kicks easily.
Fury would be best advised to learn the kicking game himself if he went MMA. What's the point of being a skyscraper if you don't maximise the use of your length?
Them chicken legs couldn`t take one leg kick from a decent MMA and he`d find it extremely hard to learn how to check leg kicks, his stance was all over the place v Fury, he needs to learn fundamentals.
