Prime Butterbean vs Prime Wilder

Oh come on. I **** on Wilder as much as anybody but hes stopping Butterbean quickly, probably in the first round.

 

I've always Wilders resume looks way better if you just forget the whole 10x champion thing and look at him like a contender that was champion briefly.

 

Agreed - it looks worse because he was a champion.

Equally... It deserves to.

As a champion you have a target on your back, you have good fighters lining up and begging you to fight them - you can't pretend the whole division is avoiding you, that **** just doesn't fly - so a bad resume for a champ with a major belt is a red flag for lacking confidence and/or knowing they weren't that good.

I have him, I think fairly, as probably a fringe contender who lucked into a belt...
I can't put him as a legit contender because he lost far more than he won at legit contender level (and with Ortiz being not that well proven, he might have never won at legit contender level, so I'm being generous in that statement!).
I do think he'd always have had a punchers chance against even the proven legit guys, and he was probably better than almost all the gatekeepers (regardless of my belief that Chisora would've probably beaten him) - hence fringe contender.

The hype as an ATG level fighter and that he was ever actually right at the top of the division I think is unfounded... But he wasn't total trash either.

Wilder almost always gets wildly overhyped, it's moderately amusing to see him get underrated for a change, but it's nonsense to think Bean would've had much chance.

 

I see him like Frank Bruno or Earnie Shavers. If Tyson Fury is a gigantic John L Sullivan, Wilder is a gigantic Bob Fitzsimmons. In hypotheticals hes the same as Fitzsimmons where he has a small chance to knock out any ATG but if he doesn't hes getting destroyed. Wilder could have been a champion in many eras but for a fight or two, maybe three not twelve.

Stiverne is one who hundreds of other HWs who never won anything have been more worthy of a title then. Its honestly scandalous that Stiverne got to rematch his only kinda relevant win for a vacant belt. And beating Stiverne to become champion is Wilders original sin which rematching him only compounded. At least Wilder if nothing else has the KO rate record and has incredible power. At the very least Wilder is among the best who've ever lived at one element of boxing.

 

Seems pretty fair - I generally use Hasim Rahman as the parallel for Wilder... Would/did usually lose against the best, but always had a punchers chance (and indeed Rahman managed to KO arguably the head to head GOAT at the weight).

Maybe...

There's no question he hit very, very hard.

To be in the conversation as far as ATG power goes... Well, for me at least, you need to be breaking iron for starters and it doesn't help if you're primarily knocking out stiffs who give you time to throw a full power telegraphed punch, and/or are incapable of punishing you too badly if you miss with it (for me, the level of most of his opponents makes it easier to throw big - if Joshua, for example, was fighting those guys and throwing full conviction punches like the one he knocked out Ngannou with then he'd probably look just as devastating).

 

A buffet?