Deontay Wilder Will Have to Wait to Prove He's the True Heavyweight Champ
Deontay Wilder doesn’t look like the kind of dude you’d want threatening to smash in your face.
He packs colossal punching power into his towering frame and had some pretty clear words of caution for Artur Szpilka, his challenger for the WBC Heavyweight Championship Saturday night when the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, hosts the borough’s first heavyweight title clash in 115 years.
“I'm looking forward to make a statement on Szpilka's face,” Wilder said on an international media conference call to hype his third defense of the heavyweight belt he won last January from Bermane Stiverne.
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“I'm trying to bring a severe knockout. I want to get back to my knockout days.”
Wilder has certainly had plenty of knockout days in his career. His last two took longer than he wanted, and that has him feeling a tad annoyed.
Stiverne was the first man to survive the entire distance (34 of his 35 foes have bit the dust before the final bell), and he unleashed frightful beatdowns on overmatched foes Eric Molina and Johann Duhaupas before they succumbed.
Still, there are more than a few fans and members of the boxing media who remain skeptical of spending too much on stock in Wilder, who has been criticized (sometimes vociferously) for his less-than-stellar opposition.
The 30-year-old takes that criticism in stride, remaining confident in his abilities and willing to put up or shut up against any man willing to take the challenge.
“If any man feels that I'm just talk, like Szpilka says, he thinks I'm just talk. There's never been anything I said that I haven't done,” Wilder said before outright calling out his foe for talking the talk but not walking the walk in the past.
“But we've seen him, many times, talk. We've recently seen him say the same s--t he's talking about now. And what happened? He ended up becoming the loser.”
Szpilka has the reputation of a rugged Polish brawler. His lone defeat came via a 10th-round stoppage against heavyweight contender Bryant Jennings in early 2014 at Madison Square Garden.
That fight wasn't overly competitive after about the fourth round, with Jennings, a smaller heavyweight than Wilder known as a boxer and not a puncher, dropping the Pole in the sixth and finishing the job in the final round.
You can understand the frustration of those who want to see Wilder step up in a heavyweight division suddenly wide open with the fall of longtime kingpin Wladimir Klitschko to Tyson Fury last November.
The Tuscaloosa, Alabama, native has the punch and personality (one of the sport’s most jovial and entertaining showmen both inside and outside of the ring) to be a transcendent star, and that’s something he understands.
He’s set himself a goal to accomplish in the next 12 months, one that would fulfill all that promise and give American heavyweight boxing it’s first bona fide star in quite some time.
“Like I said before, I keep saying that I want it to be embedded in you guys' brains that 2016 belongs to Deontay Wilder, where he will unify the division,” Wilder said.
“There hasn't been one [a champ who held all four major belts] since 1999. That was Lennox Lewis. Now I must make history. I can't let any man get in my way from that.”
Klitschko unified three-fourths of the heavyweight crown (IBF, WBA and WBO) but never held the WBC’s iconic green belt. That piece of heavyweight hardware belonged to Wladimir’s older brother Vitali, who retired in 2013 making it vacant.
Fury is the division’s true champion and holder of two of those belts. He’s headed for a contractually obligated rematch with Wladimir this year.
The IBF stripped him of its title for taking that far more lucrative contest and will put the vacant title on the line in Saturday night’s co-featured bout between Vyacheslav Glazkov and Charles Martin.
Wilder could target that title, though he’ll likely have to make a long overdue mandatory defense against Alexander Povetkin, himself a former titlist, to keep his green belt first.
But the only stop on the line that really matters is the one that takes Wilder to whoever emerges as the heavyweight champion of the world (the real champion) when Fury vs. Klitschko 2 is over and done with.
That’s the fight that will give Wilder a chance to prove his words and settle all doubt, once and for all.
“Everything I've said I've backed up. That's why I'm still the champ. That's why I am a winner,” Wilder said.
“I'm looking forward to the world embracing me, and to continue being the heavyweight champ of the world, soon to be the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.”
All quotes were obtained firsthand.
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