A multiple-input multiple output (MIMO) wireless receiver is provided to detect data in MIMO streams received via a multi-antenna system. A filter based detector performs a first pass at decoding codewords in a MIMO bitstream, and then a parity check is performed to determine that the codewords were decoded correctly. If one or more codewords are decoded correctly, those codewords can be used as a candidate codeword and used to generate a bit log likelihood ratio as an input for a second MIMO detector pass which uses a list based MIMO detector. The first pass with a high speed, simple detector facilitates decreasing the list size for the second, optimum list based detector which helps improve overall throughput.