What Deontay Wilder Needs to Do to Stay in the Spotlight

As boxing goes, it's a tale as old as time and a song as old as rhyme.

If you're looking to spice up a fight that might otherwise struggle for traction on a weekend chock-full of playoff football strategy and presidential-hopeful hot air, a good, old-fashioned photo-op scrum is a go-to means of diversion.

To that end, an argument could easily be made that the fight-week dust-up between WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder and imminent challenger Artur Szpilka was as much made-for-retweet posing as genuine combative territory marking.

The two will meet on Saturday night atop a two-bout Showtime card set to air at 10 p.m. (ET) from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. And while Wilder is two successful defenses into a reign that began last Jan. 17 with a decisive toppling of Bermane Stiverne, there’s no less an argument the Bronze Bomber’s 364-day run has left him further from the spotlight than when it began.

He entered the Stiverne fight with 32 KOs in 32 fights, an Olympic medal and a tear-jerking backstory involving a young father who entered the ring as a means of generating funds to pay for an ailing child.

Brynn Anderson/Associated Press

The medal is no less shiny and the parenting no less respectable a year later, but the performances Wilder has since put on while dispatching two suspect challengers—high school teacher Eric Molina and overmatched Frenchman Johann Duhaupas—have more closely resembled those witnessed during the reigns of Bruce Seldon and Bonecrusher Smith than Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis.

Hence the necessity for new pre-fight sound to erase the thus far middling fury.

Of course, it hasn’t helped Wilder’s cause that the rest of the heavyweight division has experienced some significant plate-shifting over the last several months.

Upon copping his shiny green belt last January, the then-29-year-old claimant was instantly deemed a 6'7", 220-pound lady-in-waiting to decade-long kingpin Wladimir Klitschko.

And many assumed he’d ascend to the kingdom’s top spot when the jewelry-hoarding Ukrainian finally walked away from a winning streak that stretched back to when Manny Pacquiao was a featherweight.

Martin Meissner/Associated Press

Problem was, Tyson Fury had some other ideas about succession.

When the brash Englishman beat Klitschko in November in a dance that got folks nostalgic for the days of Seldon, Smith and Herbie Hide, he not only interrupted Dr. Steelhammer’s lope into the sunset, but he cut ahead of Wilder in the line of suitors angling to be the next consensus kingpin.

And the more the Alabama native struggles with the likes of Molina and extends the likes of Duhaupas, the less it appears he’d be able to dominate the likes of Fury, Klitschko and other rising big men such as Luis Ortiz, Anthony Joshua and even the 26-year-old Szpilka—who’s beaten exactly the same number of top-12 contenders (one) as Wilder, as ranked by the London-based Premier Boxing Organisation.

That means while he’s a prohibitive choice to remain the WBC’s boss as Saturday becomes Sunday on the East Coast, it figures that Wilder and his team would want much more than just a W to continue claiming the “it guy” status he insisted he’d warranted even before the Stiverne overthrow.

“I know I'm good for the sport,” he told CBSSports.com. “I know I'm going to be a mega-superstar.”

In all fairness, and in spite of his ho-hum last 12 months, some maintain he’s not altered that arc.

“Deontay just needs to keep being Deontay,” said Kevin Rooney Jr., director of public relations for DiBella Entertainment and son of Mike Tyson’s ex-trainer. “Winning. Winning impressively. And being that colorful charismatic guy on the outside. He has star power. That is unquestionable. And I think that will continue to grow with each performance.”

So long as he exits Brooklyn with an intact 0, he’ll be given many more chances to succeed.

"People who know me know that if I say I'm going to do something, I'm doing it,” Wilder said at Thursday’s final pre-fight press conference. “I am hungry. I am determined. I'm not playing with anybody in 2016. I don't say things just to sound good. My actions will speak for themselves.”

But it’d be a lot easier to buy what he’s selling in the future if he spends less time making mean faces for the cameras and more time living up to lofty promises.

Or, as boxing goes, a little less beauty and a little more beast.

Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes were obtained firsthand.