“He’s definitely on the downward spiral a little bit. He’s definitely a shot fighter,” McGuigan told Boxing King Media.
McGuigan noted that Wilder’s power remains intact, but the ability to deliver has eroded. He described a fighter struggling to find distance, missing opportunities and not finishing moments that would once have ended fights quickly.
“The last thing you lose is your punch, but his timing was terrible. He just couldn’t hit Derek,” Barry said of Deontay.
What McGuigan fails to mention is Wilder’s two shoulder surgeries as a factor in his failure to finish opponents. In baseball, once the shoulder’s labrum or rotator cuff is compromised, the explosive internal rotation needed to hit 98 mph often disappears, forcing the player to become a pitcher rather than a pitcher. Wilder is currently undergoing that exact, painful transformation.
The physical evidence from his recent outings, specifically against Tyrrell Herndon and Derek Chisora, supports this theory that this is a structural mechanical failure rather than just a “timing” issue.
Wilder moved away from the laser straight right hand. A straight punch requires full extension and a stable shoulder socket to transmit power from the legs through the punch.
If the shoulder is unstable due to multiple surgeries, the body instinctively protects the joint. Clubbing or looping the punch, using the shoulder as a hinge rather than a piston, is a subconscious way to avoid the sharp pain or instability of a full, slap extension.
His reluctance to let the right hand go against Herndon was a massive red flag. For a man whose entire career has been built on “Fear the right hand,” a reluctance to throw it suggests he no longer trusts the hardware to hold up under the torque of a maximum-effort shot.
As Barry McGuigan pointed out timing, timing is often a byproduct of physical ability. If the hand speed drops by even 10% due to shoulder stiffness, the “timing” seems off because the opponent has those extra milliseconds to slip the shot.
To compensate for lost explosiveness, Wilder loads up more. This makes him predictable. He tries to produce power through effort rather than snap, which is the boxing equivalent of a pitcher telegraphing a curveball.
If you can’t fully extend the arm without discomfort, your effective range shrinks. Wilder misses shots he used to land because he cuts the punch short to protect the shoulder.
When a fighter is labeled “shot,” it usually implies a chin that no longer holds a punch or legs that have grown heavy. In Wilder’s case, it’s a weapon failure. He is a sniper whose scope is cracked and whose barrel is bent.
He can still club a journeyman into submission with his sheer size and residual power, but against the elite, who operate in the inches and milliseconds, that losing 90 mph fastball is the difference between a knockout and a lopsided decision loss.
Wilder has become a veteran pitcher who relies on grit and dirt, but in the heavyweight division you finally run into a hitter who can sit on the slow stuff.
