Wilder's strategy and why Hearn/AJ were avoiding him

Wilder's strategy

Even in the fights where Wilder was getting outboxed or it was close (Szpilka, Washington, Ortiz x2, Fury 1) he knew that the American judges would favour his work (only Ortiz in the rematch was ahead with at least two of the judges at the time of Wilder’s 7th round KO) so he was better able to conserve his energy, minimise openings, accumulate damage on the boxer, wait for them to lose focus or become overconfident and snipe them after they fatigued and slowed down, while his opponents knew that they had to work harder and take more risks to score points. Many of Wilder’s opponents have fallen into the trap of thinking that he’s unskilled, low volume and wins based on luck so they can carefully outbox him for 12 rounds. Even if Wilder is outboxed and the fight goes the distance (Fury 1) he is still hard to beat on points because of A-side/hometown bias and the scoring effect of any knockdowns he gets: a Wilder KD can turn a round/point for his opponent into two points for him and 36 minutes is a very long time to land a critical bomb or two. There is method in Wilder’s apparent idiocy and madness, no doubt devised by intelligent trainers.

If Wilder is being pressured or hurt, his attributes (especially his power and toughness) make him extremely dangerous regardless. If Wilder is being comfortably outboxed and it’s late in a fight, he will undoubtedly take more risks to land bombs but it’s generally advantageous for Wilder to let fights go long before he seriously unloads, as this greatly reduces the likelihood of Wilder gassing before the 12th. His omnipresent KO threat deters aggression, encourages many of his opponents to move excessively and puts immense mental pressure on them, which reduces damage, fatigue, wear and risk for Wilder and compromises the stamina and movement of his opponents later on. Wilder’s record is highly deceptive: it was to his advantage for his non-Fury championship fights to go long, which made him even easier to underestimate and thus all the more dangerous.

Why Hearn/AJ were avoiding him

Irrespective of the Matchroom narrative, it’s far less plausible to me that Wilder was ducking AJ than the reverse. Martin, Wlad and Parker all wanted to fight AJ first and foremost as an AJ fight (and potential rematch) generated the most money, status (after the Wlad unification) and interest, while Wilder by contrast was at least equally high risk for relatively low reward. Hearn wanted to acquire all of the other belts from a coterie of weaker and less dangerous opponents (paper champ Martin, 41 year old, 17 months inactive, no win in 2 years Wlad, paint dry Parker) to gain maximum leverage before potentially cashing AJ out. This served additional purposes in narrowing AJ’s relative experience deficit (which Wlad noted as one of Wilder's main advantages) and aging the 4 years older Wilder out, taking the edge off his speed and explosiveness. Collecting the other belts and fighting relatively easy mandatories also enabled Hearn and AJ to duck Wilder for the meantime (further hoping that he would slip up and lose his belt, ideally to AJ’s bodyguard Whyte, which would enable them to avoid Wilder altogether) by making unreasonable demands for home advantage, one-way rematch clauses and 70-30 splits, then blame Wilder when the negotiations inevitably fell through and cite Wilder’s “weak opposition” (including mutual opponents Molina and Breazeale) to create a superficially plausible narrative of a cowardly Wilder running scared of “throwback fighter” AJ.

While Wilder was brought along much more slowly in his professional career than AJ (partly due to having only 3 years in boxing compared to AJ’s 6 before turning pro and making his pro debut at 23 rather than 24) this reduced the risk of a disastrous upset, like AJ’s KO loss to 25-1 underdog Andy Ruiz (Arreola 2.0 but fatter) which further postponed any undisputed fight. However, since 2018, no one in the sport of boxing has faced tougher and more dangerous competition than Wilder (Ortiz, Fury, Breazeale, Ortiz, Fury, Fury). A clue to Wilder being the opponent that AJ feared most in 2018 was A-side AJ’s admission that he didn’t worry about being outskilled but “I always think about that one punch”. Who had the biggest punch in boxing? And aside from power, who had the best chin between AJ and Wilder? The most courage? The most confidence? All of this paints a clear picture of what was really going on.

 

AJ TKO'd a 41 year old, 17 months inactive, dethroned Wlad in Britain in a fight where a badly hurt and gassed AJ was one punch away from losing in the 6th and this had Wilder quaking in his boots. Sure buddy.

Even rival Hearn said recently that "no one wants to fight Ortiz" and this is an officially 42.5 year old Ortiz, not the 39 year old or 40.5 year old Ortiz who Wilder fought and Hearn signed years ago to protect AJ from, as he did with Michael Hunter, as he did with Usyk, as he has done with Bivol so he could waste his career with inactivity and get him robbed against Richards, Canelo or Buatsi. You can't see the forest for the trees.

Most of the "credible opponents" in the division were cashing out against AJ, leaving Wilder with a paucity. The aging Ortiz realised he wasn't going to get his shot with AJ any time soon but he could get one fast with Wilder (who was badly in need of a quality opponent) so he signed with Haymon and got his shot soon after, with another 18 months down the road again due to a lack of credible opponents who were chasing the Wilder fight, barring Matchroom agent Whyte. When the prospect of fighting a debilitated but still very good lineal champion Fury appeared, they went for that as well because why wouldn't they? And if they'd won, team Wilder would have gained great leverage in the AJ negotiations. Fury was only a marginal underdog in America and was coming to win; he was a stronger opponent even in his depleted state than anyone AJ had fought with the possible exception of Wlad. And Wilder didn't avoid Fury after that but went on to fight the No.1 heavyweight in the world an additional two times, showing vastly more bravery in the process than quitter AJ ever has.

 

"Admitted to ducking AJ"

You are a liar.

 

In between threads on Whyte, AJ, Fury, Ruiz, Parker, Hunter, Usyk...

 

Show me where they admitted to ducking because they never actually did, it is purely the interpretation that you have been spoonfed.

 

Even though Povetkin was going to be the A-side in Russia, 3 defence Wilder still opened as the bookies favourite (though it was regarded as a 60-40).

Many if not most boxing fans are dumb so they believe that Wilder is just crap and lucky and the mugs hang on Eddie Hearn's every word.

 

Turning down a fight (short notice or not) is not the same as ducking, nor is Ortiz the only factor in this. There are men behind the scenes in the PBC who definitely didn't want Ortiz fighting AJ. They didn't even want Kownacki fighting AJ. Why? Because these were supposed to be Wilder's opponents, who was already unable to get fights with "champions" like Martin and Parker and failed drugs test Povetkin because they were chasing the AJ payday. If they allowed a post-Wilder Ortiz to fight AJ and AJ smashed the older, unprepared Ortiz, it looks pretty crap for Wilder doesn't it? If AJ beats Kownacki, there is then far less value in Kownacki for Wilder. I suspect they were happy to let Ruiz fight AJ because he had already lost to AJ victim Parker and they regarded Ruiz as a no-hoper but then he sprung "one of the biggest upsets of all time" and certainly the most absurd one.

Use critical thinking: why would Ortiz turn down a much bigger payday with AJ to fight another champion who had already knocked him down 3 times and KO'd him, who was also up on the cards at the time of the stoppage, when Ortiz was going to be 18 months older with 4 additional fights worth of wear and tear? If Ortiz had full control and was really a coward (for which there is no evidence in the ring) he could have taken the money and fell to the canvas as soon as AJ caught him with a few good punches.