“I will get my revenge. It’s an eye for an eye. I want pay back in blood.” — Deontay Wilder
LAS VEGAS — You can’t blame Deontay Wilder for all those nights he thought this going to be easy — because it usually was. After all, he won 42 straight fights, 41 by knockout. His right hand was the Hammer from Alabama. So, what if his footwork was clumsy and his jab was ordinary?
But that right hand. Lord, it evoked memories of Earnie Shavers, the most ferocious one-punch heavyweight I ever saw. Like Shavers’ right, it knocked them down, and when Wilder hit them, they didn’t get up. It was the eraser that wiped out all mistakes.
Until he knocked down Tyson Fury, who was flat on his back, eyes closed. Amazingly he got up, beat the count and in the remaining time, threw serious punches that earned him a draw.
When they met again, Fury (30-0-1) smothered Wilder’s punching room, took away his right hand and took away his title in seven lopsided rounds.
They meet in the rubber match at T-Mobile Arena on Saturday night, with Fury’s WBC title at stake. The fight, which had been scheduled for July 24, was postponed after Fury contracted the coronavirus.
Since the second fight, Wilder (42-1-1) fired his trainer, former lightweight champion Mark Breland, and replaced him with a heavyweight fighter-turned-trainer, Malik Scott.
“They say that things happen for a reason and that we don’t understand that reason until we get to a certain place in life, then we understand it,” Wilder says. “My whole team understands everything that happened and we’re looking forward.”
Asked what Wilder must learn from the new man, Teddy Atlas, the erudite commentator, and trainer, put it simply: “He needs to learn how to fight.”
It’s not sarcasm, it’s the cruel truth, based on his last fight with Fury. The footwork needs improvement, the jab needs improvement, the head movement needs improvement. Wilder carried The Truth in his right hand, but the rest of him needed a makeover.
Has Scott given him one? That’s the question that hangs over this fight.
He doesn’t have to be perfect this time, but he needs to be a different fighter when he steps in the ring. Clearly, the last fight was proof he can’t win without improvement.
His right hand can cover a lot of sins and he needs that to happen only once. But based on the last fight against Fury, the rest of his arsenal is in dire need of a change. That’s why Breland is out and Scott is in.
The training camp between Scott and Wilder can best be described as teaching a guy who already carries a Ph.D. in knockout power in his right hand, the ABCs of fundamental for the rest of his game.
If they achieve what they set out to do, they will come to the moment with a new set of circumstances and a new set of chances. But it will take some serious changes for him. Can it be done?
It doesn’t happen very often but those old enough to remember might recall that Joe Frazier, was also basically a one-punch fighter with his left hook. We used to kid him that if his right shoelace became untied, he didn’t have a right hand to re-tie it.
But Eddie Futch, his trainer, hired a former middleweight-turned-trainer named George Benton to teach Frazier how to throw an effective right hand before Ali-Frazier III.
“I don’t care if it’s any good,” Futch told Benton. “Ali may have the highest boxing I.Q. in history. He thinks. I want him to think and wonder where that right hand came from.”
When Frazier threw it in Manila, it hurt and surprised Ali. It made the fight a lot closer. Frazier didn’t win, but that right hand turned that battle into the greatest heavyweight fight of all time.
So which Wilder will we see? How can you tell? This is the longest Wilder has been out of the ring. Wilder says, “The old Deontay is no longer there. I can’t explain it to you. I have to show you on Oct. 9.”
After the embarrassing, one-sided defeat, Wilder made the ridiculous claim that the weight of his monster robe and the heavy mask he wore into the ring weakened him for the fight.
Doubtful but if true, he should have come to fight — not pose. For much of the long wait between fights, he remained quiet, but this past week he suddenly spoke.
“Fury is a freaking cheater,” he said. “He had some kind of metal in his gloves. My coach Mark Breland spiked my water bottle. You think he ain’t gonna try to cheat this time? Oh, they’re thinking, they’re coming up with a master plan. My [comment] to him: Man, you couldn’t even get me out on loaded gloves and the conditions I was under. You couldn’t knock me out, you didn’t knock me out.”
To which Fury replied: “You know what? I’m going to cheat again because I’m going to smash his face in. According to him, that’s cheating because he’s not supposed to lose. Unfortunately, I’m going to cheat again. I’m going to kick his ass.”
Think about what hangs over their third meeting — the sound, the fury, the rhetoric, the mystery, the bravado, the chaos and the fighters combined record of 70-1-2.
We just might have one hell of a fight.
