What I am seeking opinions about here is not the overall skills & quality of Wilder as a boxer. Though my bias is that while most every HW is said by many to have fought largely bums, I do think that Wilder is especially fecund in battling "Winos from the Alley" What I want to know is considering that he has knocked all but one man out, & sometimes to devastating effect, where does Wilder's pure power rate historically? One shot KO power, his largest virtue. Though his height, length, & speed are excellent attributes. An interesting question to consider is do you believe power is generated in enough different ways-form/the kinetic chain, speed, heavy hands, body mass, etc...That it is possible (& if so is it still very unusual) that a man with such low BMI & muscle mass for his height at HW-& with no legs to speak of-can still through speed, length, leverage/windmill windup & an overall whip-like effect strike as hard as (the top hitting) much stronger & bulkier men? Understand I am NOT discussing how effective a puncher he is. Just total force as if we had an infallible machine register PSI every time a guy is clocked. And to magically compute the "heavy hands" factor as this may add to force + impact. So in this universe, a 3rd rater or below such as Butterbean potentially could be up at or near the top. Do the results speak for themselves, or is it exaggerated by the deficiencies of his opponent, &/or his awkwardness allows him to land unseen clean blows that, like Tyson's speed & combinations, makes his already fairly or very high level of power look even better?
A lot of his fights he has opponents stunned from illegal rabbit punching..... Someone had a video of him the other day. I would say he if he had this one punch power he would be knocking out guys quicker. Mike Tyson had by far more compact punching power. Wilder is definitely a TOP puncher but not so sure how effective with durable proven guys. In contrast Joshua has hurt guys with fewer punches and they had the better proven chins! If we went and looked at the mythical body count you would see most guys are not remotely close to being knocked out besides Stiverne. Ortiz was fatigued, and he was looking at the crowd. Molina was on his way up, Duhaupas was standing, Washington walked away in dissapointment, even Arreola was taking everything and the ref stopped it while he was standing. These are all the top guys he's fought. It seems to me he needs to catch opponents off guard. I think he's a bit over hyped, I consider Joshua the harder puncher!
He's a fit heavyweight who can punch. There's no need to overcomplicate it. He's knocked at least one good fighter out. And he's knocked everyone else out too, albeit mostly low quality opposition. It's not a good idea to get hit by him. He's legitimate heavyweight puncher.
I think the poor quality of his opposition makes it impossible to be justifiably confident. He can certainly hit, but maybe his power would look far less impressive on opponents who couldn't be landed upon as cleanly.
first thing that came to mind. his opposition hasn't been great but then again such is the hw division of late. he's able to really wind up on his shots where a more polished opponent might not let him do that or might give him some pause about doing it. i'd also like to comment on the point made about it being unusual for long lanky guys to be knocking dudes out. there is something to be said about an unencumbered fluid motion in a power shot from a long sinewy fighter. guys like arguello and pavlik were not the most impressive looking guys but could throw a shot. hearns of the late 70s early 80s was a 6'1" welter.
Near or equal to the top hitters in history, and I'm not exactly Wilder's biggest fan. He clearly has tremendous hitting ability, I can't see how that can be disputed. What's holding him back is his ability to consistently box effectively and land that power to best effect. Those windmills look spastic but if they land flush you will need a team of chiropractors to unscrew your neck again. I frankly prefer the pinpoint punching of a Povetkin, who may hit with less overall force on his best shot, but by gum, he's going to land a whole bunch and probably in combination. That to me is more effective. Take for instance Duhaupas, who took everything Wilder could throw at him and was still standing when they stopped it, having given a good account of himself. Against Povetkin, Duhaupas landed barely anything of consequence and got KO'd clean by accurate and timed shots.
He's a dangerous guy. For the whole fight, which not a lot of hitters are. His top conditioning really pays dividends and that's where a lot of the hitters are not good. Imagine if the guy had a left hook.......It's just a right hand and at his age a bad hand/bad shoulder/elbow injury can be devastating. He has nothing else to fall back on. As he ages those reflexes won't be as good and that right hand will get slower and wider. That will be a problem sometime.
Is light for a big guy like a giant welterweight light on his feet And has excellent gas tank for a HW .This means he is dangerous late in fights when modern HWs start to slow down and chug this is unusual now a days.he wips his punches in with real speed and malice and he really wants to destroy his opponents.He reminds me of Cuevas a little in that every thing he throws is aimed at hurting his opponents.I like watching him and the Hw division is very exciting at the moment.
Hard to tell since he fights sparring partners and old men. I know that's a slight exaggeration but only slightly.
There is no question Wilder can hit. The question is how hard? Power and KO% is often tied to class. The only top ten guy he fought ( In his prime ) was Stiverne, and I question if he should have been ranked in the top ten. Stiverene went the distance. Oritz 3-4 years ago beats Wilder. He nearly had him the round before, then gassed. While Wilder's comeback and KO over Ortiz were impressive, I think it was partly a lack of stamina type of KO. Wilder reminds me of a supersized Bob Satterfield ( thin but a hitter ) except he has a big height and reach advantage over anyone. I still think Wilder is just a fair boxer, and will be stopped once he faces a top 5 ring magazine ranked opponent in his prime, meaning not 38-41 years old. I'd say 9 out of 10 on the power scale. Enough to stop most if he lands bombs.
I'm trying to remember who of quality he has one-punch KO'd. Was a drooling, absolutely shot Liakhovich quality? Or Szpilka? Ortiz wasn't one-shotted. At this point, he's a well-protected, slightly more proven Courage Tshabalala.... and people are actually considering him some kind of ATG?
I don't rate Wilder very highly, but Courage Tshabalala would've lost 7-8 times against Wilder's opposition. Every time Chabalala faced fringe contender/jorneyman he got destroyed. So even shot Audley could KO Chabalala and fairly quickly.
Ortiz 3-4 years ago does not beat wilder unless he’s taking steroids like the cheat he was You underrate wilder ...he’s way better than satterfield
He's probably no Shavers. But he's up there with the big punchers. I suspect that if the Alis and Holmes of the world heard him mentioned as the biggest puncher of all time, they would probably see whoever suggested it as a little bit of a silly boy.