DEONTAY WILDER 40-0-1 (39)
WHEN WILDER HIT ME IT FELT LIKE A FULLY- FORMED PEDIGREE HORSE KICKING ME IN THE FACE”
DEONTAY WILDER, the WBC champion, is the heavyweight who polarises like no other. To some, he is the hardest-hitting heavyweight the division has seen in years, while to others he is a noodle-legged eyesore whose rudimentary haymakers somehow bail him out of trouble time and time again. To some, he has been protected through 41 fights, so his 39 knockouts are merely a number, while to others he has taken the sort of risks – against awkward types like Luis Ortiz and Tyson Fury – that mean more than a lot of what Anthony Joshua, his rival champion, has done. As per usual, the truth is probably somewhere in between.
That he is currently the hardest puncher in the heavyweight division is beyond dispute. His stoppage of Ortiz in 2018 was evidence of this, as were the two knockdowns he scored against Fury last December – knockdowns scored from arguably the only two clean punches he landed in 12 rounds. Safe to say, when Wilder, 33, hits opponents, there is a noticeable effect. They might not be knocked out. They might not even be knocked down. But there will, rest assured, be an immediate change both in their demeanour and game plan.
“I said he might be the best heavyweight puncher in history and people were like, ‘How can you compare him to Joe Louis, Mike Tyson and George Foreman?’ The reason I say that is this: they were all better fighters than him and had better attributes,” says Naazim Richardson. “Deontay didn’t have any other attributes when he won and started defending his world title. He just hit you. I mean, he f**king hit you.”
Speak to anyone unfortunate enough to have sampled Wilder’s unique brand of power and they will back up the suggestion it tastes like no other.
“I’ve sparred every heavyweight you could think of and, when it comes to power, Deontay Wilder is in a league of his own,” reveals Richard Towers, a former sparring partner of Wilder.
“Put it this way: he hits four times harder than Vitali Klitschko, five times harder than Wladimir, six times harder than Joshua, and eight times harder than Fury. When Wilder hit me, it felt like a fully-formed pedigree horse kicking me in the face.”
As with most out-and-out punchers, it’s when the shots don’t land that trouble awaits. Last year, Wilder, six-foot-seven and 15 stone, had difficulty with Ortiz, a savvy Cuban southpaw with a tight defence, for seven or eight rounds (bar that knockdown he scored in the fifth) before making a breakthrough in the 10th, and then, in December, struggled pinning down Tyson Fury until the dying embers of the fight. Both were reminders that the “Bronze Bomber” is a threat when in firing range and landing – his comfort zone – but quite the opposite when aimlessly swinging in the wilderness.
“Ortiz was getting ready to stop him and Ortiz is at least 45 years of age,” quips Chris Byrd. “If he had thrown three or four more punches, he would have stopped Wilder. “Ortiz [officially only 39] gave Deontay Wilder problems because he was like, ‘I’m six-four, I’m big, and I’m not worried about this guy because he doesn’t know how to fight.’ He’ll look at Joshua and think, ‘I’m roughly the same size but he isn’t educated mentally. He might catch me but if he doesn’t he’s going to get a boxing lesson.’ That was kind of what Deontay Wilder found out.” Years before he became a world champion, Wilder was invited by Adam Booth to train alongside David Haye at their gym beneath a railway arch in Vauxhall, London. In sparring sessions, the American would give as good as he got, even when green and unruly (more so than he is today), yet Booth often wondered how he would fare when pitted against the intelligent movers and fellow giants of the division. “I think Tyson Fury has shown there are a lot of things lacking in Deontay Wilder’s boxing IQ,” he says. “To beat Wilder, you need to make him step to you. He doesn’t have good balance. If you allow him to stand still, he can set himself. But he looks like he’s very unsteady and unstable through his hips and his knees, so, as soon as you make him move, he loses a lot of his power because he doesn’t have a solid base when moving.”
Even if he is the least technically refined of the trio, it’s fair to say Wilder’s power remains the great equaliser. As shown against both Ortiz and Fury, he can be losing every round of a fight and still manage to salvage something from it.
“Remember, even Artur Szpilka made him miss a lot,” says Richardson. “His herky-jerky
style really upset him, and I was surprised he could do it for that long. Szpilka was making him miss the whole fight. But when Wilder landed, all those misses didn’t matter no more.
“Fighting Wilder is like fighting a guy with a five-pound weight in both hands. He’s saying, ‘I don’t care what you do to me, I don’t care how many rounds you win, the minute this fivepound weight lands, everything you did is null and void.’
“What makes him special is this,” Richardson continued. “One, he’s always in shape. You don’t see any pictures of him where he’s not lean. You never see him puffy. He’s like those damn NBA players. And two, he carries that equaliser.”
Unlike in a game involving a ball, an equaliser in boxing can be produced even when the scoreline is seemingly unassailable, and when one of the two sides appear overmatched. It’s what makes boxing, especially heavyweight boxing, so thrilling, and it’s why no man can ever relax in the company of Deontay Wilder.
“If Anthony Joshua puts pressure on him, he might win,” Byrd said. “Wilder can’t take pressure. If you do it the right way and use solid defence to get close, he can’t take it.
“But if you give that man distance and find yourself in his range, at the end of his punches, he will knock your head off with punches that might not even land clean. His punch power is terrifying. He has power that is unbelievable.”