(Photo credit” Esther Lin/Showtime) By Dan Ambrose: Deontay Wilder’s victory last Saturday night over WBC heavyweight champion Bermane Stiverne has resulted in Wilder being moved up in the Ring Magazine rankings from No.6 to No.2 behind only #1 Alexander Povetkin and Ring Champion Wladimir Klitschko. Stiverne goes from the No.2 spot to No.6 after the loss to Wilder.
Wilder’s performance puts him in position to make some big things happen in the heavyweight division. As ESPN pointed out, Wilder has the chance of becoming a crossover star with his charisma and marketability.
Wilder’s obviously got a great punch, and if he can keep developing slowly it’s possible that he can hold onto his WBC title for a long, long time the same way Wladimir Klitshcko has held onto his titles.
There’s not a lot of quality heavyweights out there that can compete against a tall heavyweight like Wilder if he uses his height and reach to box his opponents from long range. With the right skillset, Wilder can essentially do what Wladimir has done in dominating shorter opposition without taking punishment. He’s obviously still very green as a fighter, but he showed that he’s still developing. He’s got work to do before he’s the finished product.
Here’s the current top Ring heavyweights:
Champion: Wladimir Klitschko
1. Alexander Povetkin
2. Deontay Wilder
3. Tyson Fury
4. Kubrat Pulev
5. Bryant Jennings
6. Bermane Stiverne
7. Vyacheslav Glazkov
8. Mike Perez
9. Chris Arreola
10. Ruslan Chagaev
Wilder have a good chance of beating Povetkin if that fight were to be made right now. As long as Wilder fights on the outside, moves a lot, uses his jab and ties up Povetkin on the inside, he’d have a great chance of beating the shorter 6’2” Russian.
Wilder would need to tie Povetkin up to keep him from getting on the inside against him, because Povetkin would definitely be looking to pressure him a lot more than Stiverne did. Wilder rarely clinched in the Stiverne fight, but he’s going to need to add that tool to his toolkit if he wants to beat the pressure fighters like Povetkin.
If Wilder was trained by the late Emanuel Steward, you can bet that he’d have Wilder clinching his shorter opponents when they came inside on him like Stiverne was doing last Saturday night. Lennox Lewis used a lot of clinching against shorter opponents, and that’s something that Wilder will need to add to his game in order to out-box some of the shorter guys that he’ll be facing in the future.
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