Wilder Stops Cox

By Boxing News - 11/18/2008 - Comments

Image: Wilder Stops CoxBy Jim Dower: 2008 heavyweight Olympic Bronze Medalist (1-0, 1 KOs) got off to a successful start to his professional boxing career by stopping Ethan Cox (2-3-1, 1 KOs) in the 2nd round of a scheduled four-round bout on Saturday night at the Vanderbilt University Memorial Gymnasium, in Nashville, Tennessee. Wilder, 23, dropped Cox twice in the 2nd round with big right hands to the head. After the second knockdown, the fight was stopped at 2:54 of the round.

Using a pawing jab, Wilder threw probing jabs at Coz in the opening round. He let loose with a handful of right hands in the round, missing most of them but landing on a few occasions. Most of the time, he didn’t get much power on the shots, but he did land one especially hard right uppercut that got Cox’s attention.

In the second round, Wilder more of the than not missed badly with wild right hands. Near the end of the round, Wilder grabbed Coz around the neck with his left hand and proceeded to nail him with three successive right uppercuts to the head.

Afterwards, instead of Wilder being warned by the referee for holding and hitting, the referee gave Cox a standing eight count. It seemed like strange move on the referee’s part, because not only was Wilder clearly holding and hitting, but Cox wasn’t hurt by the weak uppercuts.

Wilder can punch hard on rare occasions with his right hand, but only when he winds up with it in a big telegraphed fashion. His uppercut is something that he’s not perfected at this point and he looked awkward throwing it, without any power. After the standing eight count, Wilder landed a hard right hand that dropped Cox to the canvas.

However, the 6’7” Wilder has a lot of work to do before he’s fit to take on the top tier in the heavyweight division, as he looked slow, clumsy, lacked any kind of defense and badly telegraphed all of his shots. His jab is more of a slow, pawing jab.

In fact, it’s more of a long stick that he lethargically pushes out in front of him to push his opponents back rather than to actually score a punch. His lack of timing and accuracy are quite alarming, because he missed badly with his punches, making him look terribly clumsy and uncoordinated.

While his right hand is good, and his only real weapon, he telegraphs it from a mile away with his long windup to throw it. He’s obviously going to need to learn how to disguise his right hands a lot better in the future, especially if it’s going to be his only weapon.

However, he’s going to have to develop other weapons like his left hand if he has any real hope in becoming a contender. Right now, he looks like a slower, more clumsier version of heavyweight contender Ray Austin, although I think Austin is by far a much better fighter than what I saw of Wilder last Saturday night as well as in the Olympics. He’s clearly a diamond in the rough and has a tremendous amount of work in front of him if he’s ever to become a top tier heavyweight.