Is Deontay Wilder Punching Even Harder?

Boxing247.com

He did it again. WBC heavyweight king Deontay Wilder, who might just be hitting his peak, blitzed a game Dominic Breazeale to score yet another frst-round KO win. Now 41-0-1(40), Wilder is able to make the amazing claim that he has either dropped or stopped every single man he has ever shared a ring with.

Last night’s win saw Wilder get back on the KO track following his exciting draw with Tyson Fury (who survived two knockdowns in the fight that was scored a draw; one of them especially heavy). Having bulked up and added some muscle to his lean frame, as he said would be the case, Wilder looked every inch the dominant heavyweight puncher. But is he?

A Fury rematch aside, we need to see Wilder fight Anthony Joshua to find out. Fury showed that Wilder can be outboxed, but can any man out-pumch him? It seems doubtful, and last night’s display of lethal handiwork makes it seem even more so. Breazeale, who in his only other loss managed to stand up to Joshua’s bombs for over half a dozen rounds, was clinically obliterated by Wilder. It was a superb punch Wilder laid Breazeale out with..

Fury, somehow, even he knows not how, managed to climb back up after taking a right AND a left to the head from Wilder, but could Joshua take those kind of punches? We need to find out. It simply has to happen next – in December: a Wilder vs Joshua showdown. Assuming AJ gets past Andy Ruiz okay in June, and if no Wilder-Fury II can be made thus year (and it seems far more likely for 2020), fans should get the big one.

Enough games, enough messing around (from both sides); this fight cannot be put off any longer. Wilder is arguably in his prime and hitting harder and faster and more destructively than ever. Joshua is closing in on his prime and we know the power he also carries.

So who wins? Whoever lands first? Whoever has the better chin? Whoever it is who blinks last? Maybe. But let’s get it on and let’s see.

But right now, if you asked Dominic Breazeale, the only man to have fought both Wilder and Joshua, who wins, who hits harder, chances are pretty big he would tell you Deontay Wilder.

Wilder did what a dominant heavyweight champion of the world is expected to do, and last night’s KO win certainly gave his supporters – those that say he is THE man – further ammunition with which to back up their claim. Its up to Joshua, or Fury, to definitively prove otherwise.