THE MOST FRIGHTENING FIGHTER ON THE PLANET
Deontay Wilder is not a classic heavyweight but he has unique speed, stamina and style that make him...
HAVE you ever played basketball?’ Jay Deas begins. ‘And you do what they call turning your ankle? You know that immediate pain? That’s exactly what it feels like when Deontay hits you every time.’
Deas would know. The trainer has guided Deontay Wilder from gangly teenage novice to heavyweight champion of the world.
It’s been an agonising journey — between them, Wilder’s three padmen have suffered a hernia, separated shoulder and a dislocated thumb. All in the line of duty.
Together, though, this small team have created the most frightening fighter on the planet.
In 43 fights, Wilder has 42 wins and 41 knockouts. Tyson Fury is one of only two men to survive 12 rounds with the Bronze Bomber. The other, Bermane Stiverne, was flattened inside a round of their rematch. So come Saturday night in Las Vegas, the Gypsy King can’t say he hasn’t been warned.
But why is Wilder, 34, such a devastating puncher?
SPEED
‘DEONTAY is not the ideal heavyweight when you lay eyes on him,’ says Joey Scott, Wilder’s strength, speed and conditioning coach.
At 6ft 7in and with a reach of 83in, Wilder is imposing enough. But with spindly legs and a slight frame, he has been the lighter man in all 11 of his world title fights. Twelve come Saturday. not that it has proved much of a hurdle.
‘He’s obviously got some incredible genetics,’ says Alan Ruddock of training and research website
Boxing Science. Ruddock believes Wilder’s height, ‘long levers’, lean body and background in fast-twitch sports such as basketball give him a powerful combination of speed and explosiveness. ‘Think of it like a rocket or a tank,’ he explains. ‘If you’re big and heavy you have to produce a lot of force. If you can produce a lot of force and you’re light, you can produce a lot of speed or velocity.’
‘Speed brings power; strength doesn’t bring power,’ Scott adds.
Ruddock likens the heavyweight to Usain Bolt. ‘ You wouldn’t expect someone so tall to be so fast.’
Scott prefers another comparison. ‘ You can take a nASCAR frame and flip it over with one hand,’ he explains. ‘But it has one of the most powerful engines in the world. That’s what we call power-to-weight ratio. With Deontay, he has a small frame but he distributes more power than anyone in the sport. He doesn’t need to be Anthony Joshua. When you have all that muscle, you’re not as flexible or mobile.’
The challenge, Ruddock explains, is producing force and translating it smoothly from ‘ foot to fist’. ‘When you see world-class javelin throwers, it’s a whole body action. It’s speed at release that determines distance. It’s the same with the punch,’ he says.
To the naked eye, there are few ties that bind Wilder, Mike Tyson, Gennady Golovkin and many other heavy hitters. So is power generated through nature or nurture?
‘To a huge degree, power is just a God- given thing,’ says Deas. Ruddock, however, has worked with Kell Brook and says power can be enhanced by around 15-20 per cent. ‘Wilder trains in the right way for the type of athlete he is,’ Ruddock says. ‘Without training in that way, he probably wouldn’t be as devastating.’
Deas says: ‘I cannot train Deontay like I would train anybody else. He’s a unique athlete. Deontay’s body is a lot like piano wire and it’s almost like a Ferrari — you can’t run a Ferrari at 1,000mph all the time — something’s going to break.’ So rather than following tradition (four weeks of fitness, four weeks of sparring), Deas and Wilder do their own thing.
After every week of sparring, attention turns to correcting mistakes and searching for solutions. ‘ We know he has tremendous power, it’s really more a question of finding a way to land punches,’ Deas explains.
‘He’s a guy who thrives on new things to learn and interesting ways to increase the power.’ Chief among these is speed of fist and ‘velocity of thought’.
‘Most guys see an opening and their first thought is: there is an opening. With Deontay, the word “there” doesn’t even get out before the punch is on the target. It’s almost like high- speed internet against dial-up!’
STAMINA
POSITIONING and accuracy are also critical. But at the top level, power must be married with intelligence. Before their first fight, Wilder’s team noticed Fury’s tendency to wipe his face with his glove. They pinpointed this as the perfect time to throw a punch. In the final round it almost paid off.
Somehow Fury got up but the knockdown highlighted another crucial Wilder weapon — his stamina. As Ruddock explains, heavyweights typically tire from round eight. ‘They’re very explosive and they carry a lot of muscle,’ he says. ‘A lot of them punch themselves out.’ In six of his last 10 fights, Wilder has done the damage past halfway.
How? He is economical with his punching and brilliantly conditioned. ‘I train him just like a track-and-field sprinter,’ Scott explains. Rather than long runs, Wilder is worked into shape through sprints and agility exercises which increase his explosiveness, power and stamina.
Weight vests and resistance bands are crucial tools. So, too, is water. Wilder is a certified scuba diver and often trains below the surface. ‘He works on his breathing a lot. If you breathe the proper way and control it, guess what? You don’t use up excessive energy,’ Scott says.
‘once you start panicking with breathing, you lose energy. Your muscles get tight, you’re not able to move, not able to be agile.’
With Father Time against him, Wilder began eating more vegan food recently to stay clean. But keeping weight on is a struggle when training and pre- fight promotions are in full swing, especially in the heat of Alabama.
‘What we’re trying to do now is make sure he’s eating 5-6lb of food a day like he’s supposed to. That keeps the weight on. And we try to make sure he gets his proper rest. These things will help his power as well.’
STYLE
FOR all the sprints and scuba dives, Wilder must still land the money shot. And despite a nearperfect record, he is often ridiculed for being crude and ungainly. Typically, critics pour scorn on the wild, looping shots Wilder throws when he smells blood. Deas calls this the ‘Naseem Hamed effect — landing punches from angles that guys have never been hit from before’.
Crucially, though, Wilder tends to lose his shape only once his opponent is buzzed. And so far nobody has delayed that inevitability for too long, partly because Wilder is clever at manoeuvring opponents into position and partly because one punch is often all he needs.
‘Those big right hands are probably, from a technical perspective, bang on for what you need to produce a knockout,’ Ruddock says. ‘He’s combining that force, speed, using his long levers, he sets his feet wide and more often than not there’s a lot of body rotation.’
Deas reveals: ‘At one time, very early in Deontay’s career, we tried to make him more orthodox. I think that lasted a couple of days.’ Instead they decided to build around his awkward but effective style.
To know if Wilder is really maximising his power on Saturday night, watch his belly button. ‘Deontay turns his waist a lot more than just about anybody else in boxing,’ Deas says.
Wilder’s total commitment to his punches occasionally leaves him vulnerable. But this strategy — borne of unwavering self belief — has proven devastating. ‘As humans we all have a brake in our mind,’ Ruddock explains. ‘It will always try to stop us from giving maximum effort. ‘When you have belief like Wilder, you are able to kind of release that brake.
‘You’re willing to take the risk and believe in yourself to be able to, like Wilder does, commit with your whole body to producing that force.’ Deas concludes: ‘ As a result of the positioning of the feet, the positioning of the body, the rest, the nutrition, the sprint training and all that coming together — now he’s a one-shot killer.’
Over to you, Tyson.