Re-writing the history of boxing: WBO belt

I have the same top 4 as you, with Wlad at #7.

This is the only top 100 list at HW I can find - https://www.606v2.com/t54420-boxing-com-100-greatest-heavyweights - if you think Wilder would be around 50 on your list, pick a few around that area, research and compare their respective records, particularly against Ring ranked opponents (Ring's rankings are far from infallible, but they've generally been better than those of the alphabet soup and they go back to the 1920's, so it's as good a means of comparison as we've got when comparing fighters records over the past 100-years) relative to Wilder's and you'll probably have a better feel for where he'd stand on your all time rankings.

 

I will take a look at it properly. I don't think I have ever seen anyone write up a whole top 100 for just heavyweights either.

When this era is over I suspect we will get more lists like that.

 

I suspect I may have him around Top 50 if I did some crazy type heavyweight list. I don't really know though and I don't rate Bowe quite as highly some people do either even though he was obviously a great fighter he by large rides on the Holyfield fights which obviously do have big worth tbf.

 

For me, Wilder would be about where Witherspoon is; a little better than Shavers. A guy who was probably the second best fighter in the world for a while, but never became the Man. The winner of a Wilder / AJ fight could've reached or exceeded Bowe, but they never fought each other, so they didn't.

 

1. Bowe beat Holyfield (1). This is better than Wilder’s draw with Fury
2. Bowe’s reign against a totally washed up Dokes and journeyman Ferguson is beyond forgettable. He later beat Donald, Hide, and and Gonzalez in with an unrecognized WBO belt after losing lineage to Holyfield. This just isn’t as good Wilder being on the shortlist of guys to defend a major title into double digits.
3. I rank the two Ortiz fights above Bowe winning the third Holyfield fight when he wasn’t all there and whatever you call the Golota fights. I see Ortiz as having been a serious talent and Wilder won those cleanly.
4. The before the title stuff isn’t especially important for either.

This has Wilder slightly ahead for me. I’m not a big fan of giving the benefit of the doubt to guys who score a big win and can’t hold it together. For example, I think McCall objectively has a better resume than Bowe since he beat Lewis, Holmes, Akinwande, Maskaev, and Damiani, but nobody is going to rank him ahead.

 

@cross_trainer
It’s hard to win make as many consecutive title defenses as Wilder at heavyweight even if most of the opposition is limited. Witherspoon wouldn’t have been able to that. (He’d come in fat and lose to someone just like real life.)

(I’m on a plane and the quote function isn’t working correctly.)

 

You may be right. I don't think he gets up to Bowe, though. Not with his current resume.

Purely from the ATG debate standpoint, Wilder was very unlucky in his timing. He missed the AJ fight. He should probably have skipped a Fury rematch. Worst of all, Wilder hit his prime a few years too early for the Saudi bonanza that would've made him a top contender in a field with 70s levels of competition.

Aside from the difference in the number of losses, Wilder reminds me a lot of Shavers. Who also nearly grabbed the brass ring, but couldn't.

 

Wilder did make it to the top of the heap, but it was brief. He was pretty clearly the man after Joshua lost and until Fury won the rematch. Fury/Arum went the marination route after the draw with Wilder and basically killed the convo for Fury to be considered the best in the division.

Bowe and Wilder are close, but I think Witherspoon is definitely below both. I don’t think Wilder or Bowe would outdo each other’s career results if the opponents were switched, but I’d expect both to outdo Witherspoon w the exception of Bowe being incapable of having a good late thirties career.

 

I would disagree re: Wilder being the Man after AJ lost.

AJ and Wilder were the top of the heap for a brief, shining moment that should've resulted in a great unification match. AJ lost to Ruiz, though, which muddled things. How good were AJ and Ruiz shortly thereafter? Not clear at that point. Wilder seemed like the best guy who hadn't just lost, except that he got a draw against an out of shape Fury coming back from a long bender. So that wasn't great, either.

At that point, you have three guys near the top spot: Wilder, who just drew a fight he shouldn't have (and would go on to lose the rematch.) Ruiz, who'd just beaten one of the two previous top dogs, but looked chubby, and was therefore not taken as seriously. (He also would go on to lose the rematch.) And then there's Fury, who held the lineal title, but, well, was still recovering from the aforementioned bender. Unlike the other two, at least Fury would go on to win his rematch.

By either the standards of the time, or in hindsight, I don't see Wilder being the clear #1 guy like Bowe was when he beat Holyfield.

 

As to whether Wilder could pull off what Bowe did, or vice versa, it's an interesting question that'll depend on how good you believe their eras are. But it would also depend on which rules we're playing by. Are we measuring greatness head to head, or according to what each guy actually accomplished in his own era? The march of time might have made Wilder a better fighter than Bowe, for all we know (though I have serious doubts...), but Wilder didn't do as much as Bowe did in his own time.

 

Wilder beat a top 5 guy to win the title (Stiverne), stopped a top 5 guy twice (Ortiz), got the draw Fury, and won eleven straight title fights before losing.

Bowe beat the top guy (Holyfield), beat him again when I’m guessing he was fringe top 5, and basically did little in terms of title defenses or beating guys near the top of the division.

I don’t see that as Bowe having done more than Wider. If Fury stayed down in first or third fight, I don’t think it would be especially close.

 

If Holmes had stayed down in the second Shavers fight, Shavers would've outranked Bowe, too.

 

And he still wouldn’t have had a draw against Holmes and ten title defenses.

 

I don't even know how good Luis Ortiz was. He was over 40 years old even first time that Wilder fought him - if I remember correctly (I remember Fury saying that He was in his 50s and was "probably good in his prime, in the 90s", but that just as a humorous note) - and had literally 1 quality win in his career, over Bryant Jennings.
To touch on my earlier point, some of the early Wlad WBO contenders - like Charles Shufford and Jameel McCline - have superior resume to him. I of course acknowledge that Ortiz passes the eye-test - at least to a level that's beyond what He actually accomplished, but I'm not sure at all He'd beat prime McCline, for example.

 

They dug a 25 year hole for themselves at inception by sanctioning Francesco Damiani vs Johnny Du Something as their inaugural heavyweight title fight instead of begging Mike Tyson to accept recognition. Maybe they did ask and Tyson wasn't interested?