Who is the best American heavyweight right now?

Eh, I can see the draw for the Ruiz-Miller fight. I thought Ruiz clearly won rounds 1-4 and 8, and I thought round 12 was a tossup.

I think the reason for people saying robbery is how **** Ruiz looked in rounds 5-7 and 9-11. I thought he was going to end up getting stopped before he got enough of a second wind to at least fight at a snail's pace.

Miller could have easily won that fight if he didn't just give away rounds 1-4.

 

What point are you trying to make? Also, population size matters. "Confined to a single country" means something a little different if a country has 20 million people as opposed to 350 million.

Anyway, I think football and basketball are sapping the heavyweight talent pool in the US. If you've got what it takes to make it in the NFL, that's probably an overall better gig than boxing, as there are high paying college coaching gigs available all across the US for retired players. And if you've got what it takes to make it in the NBA, choosing boxing over basketball is literally insane. There's no CTE in basketball; worst you're up for are bad knees for the most part.

 

If you started paying attention around 5, yeah, Ruiz looks like he was dominated most of the fight. But before he started gassing and hurt his hand (he showed off the hurt hand in the ring and it clearly looked broken), he spent 4 rounds doing nothing but scoring points while Miller did nothing but eat punches.

Regardless, if we're talking about Ruiz and Miller when we're looking for the best American heavyweights, dear god are we in a sorry state.

 

Round 8 looked more like the beginning of the match. Ruiz was scoring and Miller was doing nothing.

I think on any fair card, Ruiz won 5 rounds. I absolutely could see the fight being scored a 7-5 win for Miller though. Round 12 really could have gone either way. Ruiz was active the first half of the round, Miller active the second half.

 

Its still Jared Anderson

 

Its got to be Micheal Hunter. The only other name on that list that interests me is Torrez Jr. Obviously he is untested yet but from what I have seen I've liked. Hes got power and Ive enjoyed the fights he's been in so he's definitely one to keep an eye out for.

 

I'm just trying to stay positive because he's really all we have.

 

Oh, I didn't know he was knocked out at the Olympics. Then again, he's knocked out a lot of dudes in the pros. Looking forward to seeing what he can do.

 

He got knocked out CLEAN bro. it was gnarly. Worth a watch.

 

Yeah, I checked it out. Definitely a clean KO. They need to have a pro rematch

 

A) There are an extremely limited number of those people.

B) Other countries have other sports too

C) The skills for these leagues don't necessarily translate...these guys have very limited stamina, for one thing.

This is just a sour grapes myth.

 

Jesus, you'd think Michael Hunter just knocked out Jared Anderson, with all the praise Hunter is getting.

Bakole beat Anderson. Hunter didn't.

Hunter recently lost to Artem Suslenkov and escaped with a terrible draw against Jerry Forrest.

Wilder (still), Anderson (still), Andy Ruiz (still), Big Baby Miller, Jermain Franklin, Jerry Forrest (who got robbed against Hunter), and probably Richard Torrez, too, are all better than Hunter.

Bakole is MILES better than he was when he fought Hunter, and Hunter has fallen off a cliff compared to what he was six years ago.

I kinda hope Bakole and Hunter do fight again. It's a three-round fight at this point. Bakole demolishes him.