There was a time when Deontay Wilder would have been one of his country’s most famous sportsmen, which makes the 34-year-old among the biggest casualties of boxing’s retreat toward the margins of the American mainstream.
There is no good reason why Wilder, a crowd-pleasing knockout merchant in a chiselled 6ft 7in package who is unbeaten in 43 professional fights, with 41 wins inside the distance, should not be a household name by now. He has made 10 heavyweight title defences in the five years since winning the WBC’s version of the championship, one more than Mike Tyson and Joe Frazier in their reigns.
Tyson Fury must channel Muhammad Ali … but with his feet not his mouth Read more So why has it not happened? Some of it is down to boxing’s decision to throw itself behind a paywall amid an explosion of entertainment alternatives. Some can be attributed to the emergence of four sanctioning bodies, an alphabet soup that has fractured a championship that was once handed over cleanly from one to the next. A bit more can be chalked up to plain old lousy promotion.
Mainly, though, it is down to competition. Specifically, Wilder’s lack of a big-name rival as a yardstick of how good he really may be. In Tyson Fury, he has found one. This very odd couple will come together for the second time in 15 months on Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, where they faced off one final time at Friday afternoon’s weigh-ins.
The impeccably fit Wilder came in at a career-high 231lb and Fury tipped the scales at 273lb before a rollicking capacity crowd squarely behind the challenger, the latest nod to the American’s baffling domestic conundrum. Fury has been open about his intent to pack on ballast for the rematch, eating six meals and drinking eight litres of water daily in search of a size advantage against the lighter American. It’s a bold tactic for a fighter who weighed 256½lb in their first encounter and in the same range for interim bouts against Tom Schwarz (263lb) and Otto Wallin (254½lbs), yet the 42lb weight difference on Saturday night will be two pounds less than when they fought in December 2018.
Afterward, both fighters pointed and barked at one another from a distance for two minutes rather than come together for the traditional staredown, which the Nevada Athletic Commission banned following the shoving match at Wednesday’s final press conference. “I just told him, ‘24 hours, 24 hours,’” Wilder said. “He’s nervous. Nervous energy as always.”
