Who has the greater legacy, Anthony Joshua or Deontay Wilder?

True

 

Is being given two gift decisions to win a gold medal in your hometown better than winning a bronze medal in a faraway land? Joshua should have been eliminated in the first round. Though I concede that's it's very likely that he would have won a bronze too with Wilder's draw. And Wilder probably doesn't make it out of stage one if faced with Savon either. Though Wilder had a shorter amateur career (34 months vs 45 months) and a later start (about to turn 20 vs recently turned 18). Wilder had less than 3 years boxing experience going into the Olympics, Joshua had more than 4.5.

It also bears mentioning that Joshua was one of three gold medallists representing Britain in London 2012, whereas Wilder was the only American on their nine man team to medal at the Beijing Olympics, in a squad containing four other future world title holders.

Joshua had a very fast start to his career starting from when he fought Whyte in his 15th fight. He may well have the best record after 22 fights of any heavyweight in history. But he's 4-3 in his last 7 and his marquee win by a distance came 11 fights ago. Now no one ranks Joshua among the best heavyweights in history, virtually by any metric.

 

Basically this.

And to add to this, the question is "legacy" not "resume".

If Wilder and Joshua never end up facing each other, Wilder's legacy is as one of the hardest hitters in the sport of all-time and a man who never gave up. Whereas Joshua will be remembered as the big bodybuilder who got flattened and quit against a 25-1 underdog in his first fight outside of the safety of his home country, and was content to cruise to another 2 losses on top of that.

Walk into any pub or barbershop in England - Joshua's home country - and most fans feel this way, they favour Wilder (and Fury) over Joshua.

At this point, for Joshua's legacy to be greater than Wilder's, he needs to fight him and knock him out.

 

Duhaupas..

Lmao. Haven't heard that frog's name in a long while lol.

I wonder how his Pastry business is going in Paris.

He sure roughed up Wilder and ate his shots like croissants for 9 rounds haha

 

Wilder doesn’t have legacy .

 

Joshua on paper but Wilder actually took the Fury fight three times, where as Joshua avoided Fury for years because he prefers top names to be around 40 ideally, which is why it's still a year or so too early for the Wilder fight.

Joshua's resume is mostly smoke and mirrors. Wlad was done which is why he retired straight away. Povetkin was done, only had a few left and struggled badly in those. Pulev was done and actually suffered from Covid effects. Parker was only a belt holder because Fury scattered the belts and didn't even come to win.

It is unlikely Joshua would have beaten Wlad/Povetkin/Pulev if they'd been around his age. He'd have the best chance against Pulev, but Pulev is tough and a younger faster, fitter version would have likely won on points in a boring jab fight.

 

Joshua will be remembered as a minor great. Wilder as a fraud.

You do that math.

 

He KO'd 22-0 Helenius in 6 (who recently took Joshua 7 and busted him up) and beat Vitali title challenger Charr, also went 12 rounds with dangerous roiders Teper and Miller.

Why are the likes of Pulev, Takam etc. held in higher esteem than Duhaupas? He's bigger, more durable, more determined and has a better KO win than they ever did. He also put Joshua opponents Parker and Ruiz 2 to shame in terms of effort and desire to win. He'd have likely given Joshua a better fight than all those guys did too.

 

Joshua is obviously clear of Wilder IMO. The Joshua/Fury/Wilder era turned into a real damp fart though. These guys were hyped up in the UK and US because we were desperate for great western heavyweights, but it’s clear that they weren’t it. Wilder was a very protected champ, if Fury hadn’t put on all that weight during his PED ban Wilder would probably still be an unbeaten “champion” knocking out randoms. Joshua has vulnerabilities and his response to his losses has been poor. Yes he beat Ruiz in the rematch, but he never went back to the US for some reason, so they’ll always just remember that KO, and the choice of opponents since Usyk has been poor. Fury has just achieved the feat of being battered by a 37 year old debutante, this has overshadowed anything else he’s done, plus his choice of opponents is usually depressing.

In the future when people are making their ATG lists, these guys aren’t going to fare well.

 

Let's see wilder regain his belts
Against atop 7 heavy
I will wait

 

Joshua has the better resume at the moment, but Wilder will top it if he beats Parker and Joshua. The question is will AJ/Hearn want to fight Wilder before he turn 40?

 

It's too early to tell, since they haven't fought yet.

However, the naysayers always leave off Wilder's two-knockdown, eighth successful title defense against Tyson Fury when discussing his resume, and Fury was better than anyone Joshua has beaten.

Which shows the utter bias in these threads from the jump.

Wilder scored all the knockdowns in that fight. Wilder successfully defended his title. Wilder walked out of the ring with his title and made three more defenses of it afterward.

You have to be pretty biased to leave the biggest succesful title defense off when discussing a guy's resume.

If Usyk floors Fury twice, it ends in a draw, and Usyk keeps his belts and goes on to make more defenses ... will anyone say that doesn't count on his resume?

Hell no.

If Joshua floors Fury twice and their fight ends in a draw, will anyone say it doesn't count on his resume?

We keep seeing more and more of these threads popping up because guys who have been wrong about Wilder from the get-go are squirming because Deontay is finally being recognized by the masses for being one of the great heavyweights of this last generation.

We'll find out who is better between the two when they fight.

Regardless, Wilder was one of the top heavyweights of his generation and will be remembered as such all-time.

 

Easily AJ. Wilder's "10 defenses over 5 years" is a **** line w/o it's actual context. Same morons probably think Andre Berto with his defenses and reign was a top 5 WW of all time.... F*ckin fanboys and trolls. Waste of bandwidth