Whyte’s advantages over Joshua

We can have individual opinions like "AJ won every round" or "AJ lost every round" but the overwhelming consensus is that AJ lost rounds 2 and 3, due to being hurt and gassing.

 

If Whyte's chin was as bad as you claim ("one of the worst ever") he wouldn't have come through those fights: Chisora KO'd Takam, Wach KO'd Hammer, Rivas KO'd Jennings and Helenius KO'd Kownacki. None of them KO'd Whyte, despite landing more than their fair share of clean shots. Whyte's chin is weak at world level but it would be reasonably strong even at European level.

AJ did KO Whyte with an uppercut after 6 rounds of Whyte absorbing hard shots, that's true. So one then, against a man who notoriously can't take uppercuts well. Wlad was 41 years old, 11 rounds into a gruelling fight, had been knocked down more than a dozen times in his career up to that point and he still ate AJ's uppercut flush. 39 year old Pulev was eating several AJ uppercuts in a row without going down.

AJ appeared to have decent enough heart before his run in with the human cheeseburger. He got massacred on the inside, showed poor survival instincts and then blatantly quit in the corner, he was looking for a way out immediately after the 3rd knockdown. He was tentative in the Ruiz rematch and against Pulev, then cruised to a points loss (hoping for a Matchroom decision) against Usyk because he was scared of the featherfisted cruiser knocking him out or making him quit again.

If you read the thread carefully I picked Joshua to beat Whyte in a rubber match. But in some important respects, Whyte is a superior fighter to Joshua, as is Chisora for that matter. Casual fans didn't understand this so they thought it was impossible that Usyk, having struggled with Chisora (relatively) could beat Joshua by at least as great a margin.

 

Cool

 

"Not being KO'd by these fighters proves nothing"

Watch the fights, in particular the Chisora fights, and see how many flush punches Whyte absorbed; it's not like the guy is a defensive wizard. It's clear from those fights that his chin is much better than those of the opponents that Chisora has KO'd in recent years, such as David Price and a shot Szpilka. And even those fighters didn't have terrible chins on domestic level. Takam is a tough guy, probably would have gone the distance with AJ and Chisora bombed him out. Jennings is a tough guy, went the distance with Wlad and Joyce and Rivas stopped him. Hammer is a tough guy, goes the distance with Povetkin, Ortiz and others and Wach blasts him out. Kownacki blocks punches with his head for 10 or 12 rounds against Martin and Arreola but Helenius smokes him inside 4.

Whyte's chin has no doubt got weaker over the years but it wasn't THAT bad in the past and it may well be stronger than people think even now, we'll have to see how it holds up against Parker.

 

All of those guys barring Parker have proven they can punch at that level, in Povetkin's case power is the last thing to go and Whyte wasn't almost stopped by Parker in the 12th due to blunt force trauma but because his gas tank was failing him after putting a huge amount into the 11 previous rounds. Whyte has taken uppercuts in previous fights without being KO'd or even KD'd, although his resistance is clearly worse when it comes to that shot.

 

Among say the HW top 10, Whyte has a weak chin and I never debated that. There's a huge difference between "weak chin at world level" and "weakest chin ever" though. Even Parker has his first round KO's and he caught Whyte with uppercuts, to no avail.