There has never been a better time for Parker to upset Wilder

Parker may be based on his mentality. I don't think any version could keep Joyce off him. The Parker of yesteryear was getting controversial decisions over Ruiz and Chisora, Parker in the Chisora rematch and on has been more tenacious.

Wilder and Joshua are probably more skilled then ever but I think Wilder is significantly more fragile physically and Joshua is badly mentally shopworn.

 

"Grigory Drozd?"

I'd take Drozd and co. in a heartbeat over Morales, Kelvin Price, Gavern: the guys Wilder was fighting for his first 6+ years and 32 fights as a pro were not that good. I don't think it took that much courage to fight those heavies, no matter how much Nicols may have outweighed him. And Hunter, as overrated as he's been, would have likely beaten all of Wilder's pre-Ortiz opponents. Briedis may have beaten Ortiz. Gassiev was more competitive with Wallin than Breazeale was, for what that's worth.

In this hypothetical Wilder would also have to cut below 200 lbs, which may compromise his punch resistance. We could have seen a repeat of the Romanov fight for all we know.

"That's why cruiserweights remain cruiserweights. They don't want to give up the added weight."

Sure. But it's not to say they cannot have success at heavyweight. You dogmatically adhered to this theory to the point where you predicted a 1st/2nd round Joshua KO against Usyk, despite Usyk dominating Hunter at cruiser (who stopped Bakole, drew with Povetkin) and beating Chisora by a far clearer margin than Parker did, who went 12 with Joshua no problem and beat Joshua's first conqueror Andy Ruiz. And Joshua not stopping anyone early since Molina back in 2016.

I don't know why Usyk was avoiding the heavyweight division for so long, it's an enigma to me. I have a bunch of theories but none of them are entirely convincing. He was clearly good enough to compete all along.

I don't know how this all relates to Parker though.

 

I think Parker is 6'3 to Wilder's 6'6.5. The height gap is greater than the normally listed figures, 3.5-4 inches.

 

"unless Wilder is shot to bits"

Parker's got to hope that Wilder's punch resistance and reflexes have faded due to age, wear and inactivity. Parker may be able to land more and do more damage with what he does land, compared to what he could in the past. Parker must also see Wilder as fallible given his two KO losses and the other stuff, whereas given Parker's lack of natural self-belief I think he'd be even more wary of an undefeated Wilder.

 

"Resume" is not a legitimate argument for Parker; if that's what Parker's chances were based on then he'd have zero chance. Parker is not going to beat Wilder on points given that Fury and Ortiz did not in five fights, his only chance is a KO. If Parker sticks to his "resume" aka his past performances then he will fail to get the KO (as he's failed vs his 11 best opponents, including Cojanu and Fa) and lose.

 

Hunter was a significantly higher calibre fighter than Washington, at cruiser or heavy. Hunter has better top results, far fewer losses, less bad losses etc.

I don't think it takes that much bravery as a high calibre natural 215 lbs figher to fight Morales, Harrison and Gavern types, or even Wilder's pre-Ortiz title opponents. I don't think they would beat the top cruisers. Arreola for instance lost to former LHW/cruiser Adamek. Molina and Szpilka were former cruisers. Mansour, who drew with Washington, was a blown-up cruiser who lost to Cunningham.

I don't bash Wilder much at all, let alone "constantly". The point of my OP isn't that Parker will beat Wilder, it's that he has a better chance than he used to (as in 15% is much better than 7.5%).