DEONTAY WILDER
ON FURY…AND FLOORING A MASCOT!
TORTILLA wraps and peri-peri sauce — Deontay Wilder was born and raised in Alabama but, recently, his fiery, destructive career has been doused with added spice from around the world.
No man who has shared a professional ring with the WBC heavyweight champion has been able to withstand the power in his fists. And nor, it turns out, could a giant burrito.
‘Man, people have been going crazy about that burrito,’ sighs Wilder.
The press tour for his upcoming showdown with Tyson Fury took the 32-year-old on to the set of
Nacion ESPN for what he expected would be another rousing round of pre-fight promotion.
But a single punch later, a man lay on the floor and Wilder was in the news for rather different reasons.
‘One minute I’m doing an interview and the next I look up there’s a big a** burrito to the right of me, waiting on me,’ he recalls.
‘I didn’t hit no mascots or anything like that before and I said: “Yeah, cool, let’s make it happen”. So once I got to select where I got to hit him, I told them: “I’m a headhunter, I like to knock you out!”
‘I’m one of the hardest punchers in the world and I thought there was going to be more cushion or whatever, but when I hit him it was like another opponent, it was crazy. They said I hit him on the chin, I think he was a little bit dazed at first.’
Who could blame him? Reports falsely claimed the mascot’s jaw was broken. But even the Bronze Bomber cannot recall causing that much damage with a single shot.
It has been a wild few months for the heavyweight, whose run-in with a burrito came only weeks after he was attacked in Nando’s in Belfast by Fury’s friend Billy Joe Saunders. Half a chicken was the reported weapon of choice this time. ‘(That) gives me much more to look forward to for punching Tyson Fury in the face, because Billy Joe Saunders is way too small for me,’ says Wilder.
Saunders scarpered before Wilder’s team could retaliate, but Fury will have nowhere to run when they meet on December 1 in Los Angeles.
The American insists his antics are not part of a plan to outdo Fury away from the ring, too. And in truth, the fight sells itself. Fury has battled back from depression, drug abuse and alcoholism to land another shot at glory.
But in his way now stands a champion who has won 39 of his 40 fights by knockout. The only opponent to take him 12 rounds, Bermane Stiverne, was flattened within a round in the rematch.
All this from a man who didn’t lace up gloves until the age of 20, after the news that his unborn daughter was to suffer from spina bifida forced him to find a way to make money. And fast.
Yet even during his whistle-stop amateur career, that culminated in bronze at Beijing 2008, it became clear just how hard he could bang.
‘I’m knocking these guys out and doing it with no effort,’ he recalls.
‘When I was younger (I was) slim, not the biggest guy in the crowd but the strongest, fastest, toughest... it’s amazing to be able do what I do, it’s just even more proof that what my grandmother said about me years ago is true.’
The heavyweight grew up around the church, the son of a strict pastor in the Deep South.
But his mentor and the ‘heart and soul’ of his family was a grandmother, Evelyn Loggins, who always wore white and, in turn, always tried to keep the peace.
‘She wouldn’t let my parents whup me, not in front of her,’ he explains.
‘She always said I was anointed by God and he was going to use me for something... my grandmother believed wholeheartedly in herself and so do I. Even when I used to get suspended from school, she never used to discipline me, she would never whup me or anything like that. She always used to talk to me, teach me and say that: “God is trying to use you, he’s going to use you one day, you got to be ready”. I didn’t know what she was talking about, I was a child!’ He understands better now. Boxing is his ‘blessing’ and the ‘calling’ she spoke of. And that spirituality has been key to unlocking his potential in the ring.
‘When I was in the Olympics, we had a nutritionist and she also introduced us to visualisation and meditation,’ he says.
‘I took it very seriously and I’m so thankful because I use it still to this day and it’s a very powerful thing... our mind runs everything we do so, if you have a powerful mind, then who can conquer you? Who can control you? No one!
‘I’ve already fought Fury 50 times now and every time I’ve seen me knocking him out,’ he adds. ‘I can’t wait for it to happen and to see if it comes to pass like it always does.’
This sense of destiny has always guided him. In 2005, when still only 19, his life was turned upside down when he found out his daughter Naieya would be born with an incurable defect that leaves many sufferers unable to walk.
He and the baby’s mother were offered an abortion but the fighter took another path. ‘That was an option but it never was a possibility,’ he insists, his voice strikingly more quiet and sombre.
‘I knew immediately that we were going to keep her because I felt like a life deserved to be lived... I just felt like it was right, sitting in that doctor’s office, with dimmed lights and as he told us the pros and cons of what it takes to take a child with spina bifida.
‘I was up for the challenge and that was the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. If you do right, right will follow and God has blessed me so much.’
That meant giving up his studies and his dreams of playing American football. He worked as a waiter and a truck driver for Budweiser but only the Skyy Boxing Gym in Northport offered him the riches to give her a better life.
‘I was just going to put myself out there to make some money for my daughter,’ he says.
‘I was going to be a journeyman — put me in there I don’t care. I knew I had the skill, the will, and the determination to do this sport. I knew I was the king of fighting because I have always been.’
He promised Naieya, now 13, that he would become world champion. He kept his vow and many operations later she is running and doing gymnastics. Wilder now looks after seven kids in all, including his fiancee’s child.
‘I love a big family, I want one more, I need eight! I always wanted a basketball team with three sons,’ he jokes.
Wilder’s stock in the game is growing too. He has become the willing face of American heavyweight boxing. But it wasn’t always this way. As a teenager he was a ‘loner’ who only fought when he tested by other kids.
‘One time, I was 12 or 13 and I beat this guy up so bad, I beat his a** and I got on top of his back and I pulled his neck up from his back trying to detach his spinal cord from his back and I had him screaming,’ he recalls. ‘I told him the instructions, I said: “Say momma help me” and he said: “Mooooma heeelp meh!”’
The scrap scarred him too, though. ‘I was tired of leaving my house and always having to f ****** fight all the time. I remember I looked up to the sky talking to God saying: “I’m tired of fighting”, with tears running down my eyes.’
Even years later, after it became clear his future lay in boxing, Wilder struggled to forget his days at Budweiser. ‘I’d go into different stores and their bottles weren’t facing front ways like they should,’ he remembers.
‘I used to go into stores, help them out and front-face bottles and s*** like that. It was just a habit, I took pride in my job... that just tells you a lot about me.’
Soon it will only be Fury’s face he wants to rearrange. And, should he continue his knockout record on December 1, who knows, maybe he’ll toast victory with another burrito.
I hit this big-a** burrito on the chin... he was a little bit dazed