By Scott Gilfoid: Now that Floyd Mayweather Jr. has retired from boxing there is a hole that needs to be filled by another fighter to step into his shoes to become the next star that can carry boxing for the next 5-10 years. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez has already been exposed several times, and he’s clearly not the guy that can fully step into Mayweather’s shoes.
One fighter who could take the baton from Mayweather is WBC heavyweight champion Deontay “Bronse Bomber” Wilder (35-0, 34 KOs). He’s got the personality, punching power, the knockouts, the crowd pleasing personality and the overall talent.
Former world title challenger Gabriel Rosado believes that Wilder is one of the candidates that can step into the shoes of Mayweather to carry the sport if Mayweather chooses not to come back in 2016.
“Guys like the Bronze Bomber. He’s got a great personality. I’m really respecting his fight game,” Rosado said to Fighthype. “He’s got some things he needs to work on, but he’s actually getting better. You got him. I think the sport will be fine without Floyd, but I think people are taking that blueprint. I think dudes are following the blue print from Floyd. A lot of dudes want to show their personalities,” Rosado said.
I must admit I totally agree with Rosado. Wilder, 6’7”, definitely has the talent and the personality to carry the sport and become the next big PPV star. Wilder realizes that for him to bring the heavyweight division back at the prominent position in boxing, he’s going to need to unify all the titles and defeat all the top names that would dare to take the belt from him. This means that Wilder will need to whip the following heavyweights to totally clean out the division to make him the king:
Alexander Povetkin
Wladimir Klitschko
Dillian Whyte
Tyson Fury
Carlos Takam
Vyacheslav Glazkov
Bryant Jennings
Lucas Browne
Ruslan Chagaev
Anthony Joshua
Kubrat Pulev
Luis Ortiz
Alexander Ustinov
Joseph Parker
Charles Martin
I figure Wilder has around six or seven heavyweights he needs to beat before he’s crowned as the next Mayweather. Once Wilder beats the top 5 or 6 heavyweights, he’ll be able to easily pick off the rest of them because the talent drops off dramatically once you get past the first five or six top guys. Wilder won’t have much problems at all in beating the rest of the guys.
The Klitschko-Fury fight will remove one of the guys that Wilder needs to worry about. The same with the Joshua-Whyte fight. The losers of those fights will be in a bad position where it will take ages for them to get back to the top. Wilder will likely find himself fighting Povetkin, Klitschko and Whyte in terms of his next tough fights. In between those fights, Wilder will take some voluntary defenses to keep sharp and to hone his already superb skills.
Wilder definitely has the personality, charisma and the fighting style to take over for Mayweather. Wilder is like the Gennady Golovkin of the heavyweight division. Because Wilder is a heavyweight and an American, see him as having a much better chance of taking over for Mayweather rather than Golokvin. Wilder has the ability to trash talk, and talk about different things. I think that gives him a huge edge over Golovkin, who never trash talks and is always polite.
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