Wilders pre title competition is underrated

They don't call him Scuba Scott for nothing

 

Yes
They stepped up sooner rather than facing as many journeyman boxers

 

zero

Great question regarding price.f we had gone 31 -0 against weak opposition he might have lost the stage fright he seemed to have. His chin would have let him down eventually though.

 

It has made me wonder

In the UK HWs get stepped up very quickly alot of the time

Consider Chisora fought - Undefeated Fury, D Haye, Undefeated Helenius, V Klitschko, D Williams, Sexton twice, Undefeated Scott
All within 21 fights

Whyte fought Undefeated Joshua, Undefeated Browne, Helenius, Chisora twice, Undefeated Rivas, Povetkin, Parker, Allen
All in under 30 fights

These are just 2 examples but I can easily cite more examples


I think sometimes a slower step up helps teach the fighter how to pace themselves, learn where they can be vulnerable and protect those vulnerabilities to go further

I would imagine that if Price fought the same opposition as Wilder up to the title shot, he may have been more ready for that step up.
I could imagine Price having a similar record up to that point

 

It's, not good, bad or terrible. Either way, it's a resume not worthy of the hype that was given.

 

I find this to be almost insane.

 

wilder doesn't have a good win to his name. he has has beens, bums, and dives.

 

My friend had an assessment of Wilder that I quite liked it quoted: "Wilder is an illusion, a carefully created fraud whose's power was magnified by his opponents inability to take a shot."

 

He was, but olympic medalist aren’t equal.

Guys like Ali, Holyfield, Bowe, Lennox Lewis, Wlad, etc.. all had around 100 amateur fights or more while Wilder I don’t think even had 40 amateur fights, so it makes sense why Wilder’s team was patient and cautious in the early stages of his career.

 

I think Wilder may well have the single hardest shot in boxing history, only Shavers could be rated higher. But his opposition was very poor, at best a 5 out of 10 rating. Then again the division ain't exactly deep

 

Basically, yes...

His best win is often overrated - not only was Ortiz old, but he was two and a half years past his best win in Jennings (who some rate higher than I do, I can't put him higher than a decent gatekeeper) and who had fought only Dave Allen, Scuba Scott and Tony Thompson (and Malik and Tony were finished, neither fought again).

The sad thing, in some ways, is that once in the ring Wilder had some fighting spirit - he had no quit in him even when totally outmatched against Fury in #2 and still outmatched against the poor version of Fury in #3.

But outside the ring, he either had no bottle in matchmaking or was obedient enough to follow narratives set for him... And ducked not only Joshua, but Whyte too.

We might never know what he "coulda" been - in reality, he never beat a legit contender and probably never beat a fringe contender either (Ortiz might have been the latter, but never proved it and that moment had probably passed by the time he fought Wilder)... He could certainly punch hard, but whether he'd have been able to do it against fighters who were legit and not either gassed or fighting super sloppily is something we'll never know.

Was Wilder a legit contender? Honestly, I don't see a resume that'd back up that claim... Or maybe he was a fringe contender who'd have had a punchers chance, but would've usually looked as outmatched as he did against Parker and Zhang (the latter having a record that arguably says fringe contender with a punchers chance himself).

 

It just begs the question... Was it really that big a punch, or was it the opposition that made it look that way?

Not necessarily in the sense of chins being absolute crap, but more in the sense that it was possible to wind up a recklessly hard punch in a way that wouldn't have been possible against guys who were more evasive and/or could hurt him back.

For a parallel example... I don't think Joshua ever unleashed a bigger punch than the one straight down the pipe that cleaned out Ngannou... If he'd fought the same opponents as Wilder was I think he'd have been able to swing that hard more often - if so, would he be looking like he was in the frame for biggest punchers ever, too?


How many guys in history could've hit that hard if they'd been that protected?

 

Makes Valuev's competition look better. tons of opponents possible. But who did we, the diehard fans of the sport, get? Lots of potential difficult matchups. Never got'em.