It wasn’t always like this, you know. There was a time, within my memory, when the best heavyweights fought the best heavyweights, no matter how deep the division was. Sure, there were the Klitschko years where the competition wasn’t exactly fierce. Larry Holmes suffered through a similar era too. You can only fight the best of who’s available. But what if you don’t fight the best of who’s available? What does that say about the health of the division, the sport, and its ability to be taken seriously? And what does it say about the fighter who doesn’t take those fights?
The Good Ol Days
If we think of the last golden age of the heavyweights (Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson, and Riddick Bowe), for the most part, they fought each other. Now, there are exceptions during those hallowed days due to Tyson’s incarceration and Bowe’s indifference and mental health issues, but still, Tyson fought Lewis once and Holyfield twice. Lewis fought Tyson once and Holyfield twice (plus Vitali Klitschko once too). Bowe fought Holyfield three times. And Holyfield? He fought everyone. Bowe three times, and Lewis and Tyson twice each. Had Bowe kept it together and Tyson kept himself out of the clink, we would have seen even more top-tier fights. Alas, as they say. Regardless, we were not hurting for marquee matchups during the time of the big four.
Going even further back to the truly shiniest golden era of the big men, when giants like Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, and Joe Frazier walked the earth, no one was ducking nobody. Ali and Frazier went to war three times, Ali and Foreman once, and Foreman and Smokin’ Joe twice. If you’re looking for a fourth, Ken Norton fought Ali three times and Foreman once. Hell, George eventually fought Holyfield. But as Lou Reed once sang, “Those were different times.”
We do currently have a version of a big four in the heavyweight division. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not comparing the foursome of Oleksandr Usyk, Tyson Fury, Anthony Joshua, and Deontay Wilder to those I’ve named before them. To be fair, the undersized and nearing middle age Usyk seems willing to fight (and beat) anyone. Just ask Fury and Joshua…twice. Fury just went toe-to-toe with Usyk and fought Wilder three times. Yet still, one can’t shake the feeling that we, the boxing fans, deserve more. Some of the blame does fall at the feet of the fighters.
Joshua vs. Fury was, at one time, the biggest fight that could be made, and the two pugilists seemed to want to talk more about fighting than do any actual fighting. But there is one strange outlier here…why didn’t Joshua and Wilder ever happen?
Wilder vs Joshua: When Marinating Goes Wrong
While the risk to the loser was not without note, the odds were much better that they could have parlayed one fight into two or three rainmakers. Joshua was and is clearly the most talented in the division, but he has a tendency to lose heart, become cautious, and forget his defense. Now Wilder? He has no defense at all. Few fighters in the history of the sport have done more with but one single tool–a massive right hand. His legs are as thick as twigs, his hands are too low, and his chin is not as big as the heart he showed in his three bouts with Fury. Honestly, despite Joshua’s superior craft, technique, and genuine power in a one-on-one matchup, I’m not sure I wouldn’t want to be Wilder. He’s too brave for his own good, whereas Joshua isn’t brave enough. We all gave Joshua too much credit for KO’ing a dead-tread Wladimir Klitschko after being knocked down in the fight himself by the faded Ukrainian.
Of course, apprehension on the part of either fighter isn’t the only reason the bout didn’t happen when they were in their prime. There were those pesky politics.
Just when talks were heating up way back in 2018, when both men had never suffered a loss, the deal fell apart and then seemingly continued to fall apart over and over again. You have to remember, this was before Fury completely exposed Wilder and prior to Joshua’s inexplicable TKO loss to the horrendously out-of-shape Andy Ruiz Jr. Joshua was in his physical prime at just 29 years of age, and Wilder was such a KO artist that even at 33, four years Joshua’s senior, no one would declare any signs of ring rust at the sight of him. They were, as the upper-crust might put it, “in their salad days.”
There Was Hope At One Point
In June of 2018, it actually appeared that the super fight would take place. The money was agreed on (at least publicly), Wilder was willing to go to the UK and trade punches in Joshua’s backyard and agreed to an automatic rematch clause. Again, these were words said aloud (mostly by Wilder’s co-manager Shelly Finkel), but never did quill find its way to parchment. Without knowing more of what was going on beneath the surface and just thinking of the two men as “soldiers,” as we sometimes silly fight fans have a wont to do, one would assume that if Joshua were getting everything he wanted from Wilder in terms of location, purse, and rematch, then how could it be Wilder who backed away from the deal?
And this is where those of us who love the fight game start pulling out our hair and gnashing our teeth. A whole year went by without a Wilder/Joshua fight making it onto the schedule. What makes the whole sad scenario all the more frustrating is Wilder had been pounding the floor, stomping his feet for a shot at Joshua for the entirety of that year after his TKO victory over the ancient Luis Ortiz (no one really knows how old that guy was then, or probably even now). Of course, the blame game went back and forth, with Finkel making a lot of noise about Joshua not wanting the fight and the ever-silent Al Haymon remaining ever silent in their representation of Wilder, and Eddie Hearn doing his slickster act for his man Joshua. It was all so damn tiresome.
Then, just when it seemed all hope was lost, in stepped DAZN. And look, I’m the last guy to defend DAZN’s price point, ringside team, or sheer unprofessionalism–like going into a non-English speaking fighter’s corner and having no interpreter on the payroll to tell you what in the world was being said by the trainer to his charge. But look, if nothing else, DAZN put a $100 million three-fight deal on the table. Now, when I say a $100 million dollar deal, that wasn’t the split, that was Wilder’s portion to drop into his piggy bank. To stretch the animal kingdom euphemisms even further, DAZN put together quite a kitty. Back in 2019, there may have still been some prejudice towards DAZN for being an app and not a “real” network like HBO, SHO, or ESPN, but you know what was real? The $100 million. Hell, why not fight in Sherwood Forest with an audience of fans broadcasting the fight live to Facebook from their iPhones for that kind of money?
The Decision Wilder Will Likely Regret For Some Time
That Wilder turned the deal down isn’t all that weird, I guess. I mean, we are talking about boxing, where things seldom make sense, and the universe rarely lines up for those of us who love the sport but wish it were easier to love. But what’s really weird is what Wilder turned the deal down for: a single fight with, wait for it…wait for it…Dominic Breazeale. And hey, Breazeale was a relatively live (if pretty soft) body, but for Wilder, that was nothing more than a tune-up fight for a guy who had been screaming to the heavens about his desire to take Joshua out. And as it turned out, it wasn’t even a tune-up fight for Joshua because after the DAZN deal fell apart, Wilder went back after the further calcified Luis Ortiz again (winning by 7th round KO), before taking another shot at Tyson Fury after their split draw in December of 2018–a decision that many felt was a bit of a gift to Wilder.
No one with any sense would argue that Fury/Wilder 2 in February of 2020 wasn’t entertaining, but while the first fight ebbed and flowed from round to round, the rematch was largely a Fury affair. The big soft-bellied Brit dropped Wilder in the 3rd and the 5th before the ref mercifully stopped the fight in the 7th before more damage to Wilder could be done. What we didn’t know at the time (although some may have guessed) is that we had already seen the best of Deontay Wilder. Twenty months later, Fury and Wilder (with neither man taking a single fight in-between) got it on again in one of the craziest fights I’ve ever seen. Fury put Wilder down in the 3rd. Badly hurt, somehow Wilder survived the round and then dropped Fury twice in the 4th. Unfortunately for Wilder, Fury got up both times. And when he did, he sent Wilder to the canvas in the 10th and then again in the 11th.
The fact that the fight lasted as long as it did is perhaps the most remarkable thing about it. Wilder looked completely exhausted several times, barely able to stand, but sometimes, a fighter’s heart is his own worst enemy. Wilder wanted Fury so badly that he wouldn’t quit until he was face down with the ref standing over him, waving his arms, not even bothering to count. It wasn’t that Wilder had enough, he had had too much.
Wilder’s fortunes have taken a turn for the worse since that third (and if there is a just deity who cares for Wilder’s well-being in the slightest, the last) fight with Fury. After taking a year off, Wilder took on Robert Hellenius in October of ‘22 and knocked out the “Nordic Nightmare” at the end of round one. Sadly, that victory was nothing more than an illusion exacerbated by a lumbering opponent and that vicious right hand that found its mark one more time.
Wilder has fought just twice since then, losing in a near shutout unanimous decision to Joseph Parker two days before Christmas last year, and then on the first day of June this year, Wilder suffered a truly humiliating defeat at the hands of the 41-year-old Zhilel Zhang. In trouble early in a fight that wasn’t exactly setting Compubox records for round-by-round action, Wilder never looked confident, especially when Zhang (who outweighed Wilder by 68 pounds on fight night) absorbed his first clean right hand. In the 5th, Wilder opened up and started to land, but with one brutal right, Zhang grounded Wilder, who beat the count but could not continue in the eyes of the ref.
Wilder Has A Decision To Make
Once a fighter full of bravado with a string of electrifying knockout wins, built largely upon the backs of many a subpar opponent and embellished by that one terrorizing weapon in his right glove, Wilder is now a 39-year-old shell of his former self. And if we are being brutally honest (and this is boxing, that’s what we do here), a man with a flashy record of 43-4-1 with an astonishing 42 of those wins coming by knockout, and still, somehow, without much of a resume. When your two (arguably at least) best wins are over the Methuselah known as Luis Ortiz, you are left with a guy who almost always made exciting fights but never beat anyone of any grand measure. And at the risk of being made a fool of by boxing (it wouldn’t be the first time), he never will.
To put it as succinctly as possible, Deontay Wilder is not a Hall of Fame fighter. Maybe he would have been if he had taken that three-fight deal with Joshua and won at least one of the bouts in the trilogy that never happened. Or perhaps if he had been given one more point on that 113-113 card on the night of that split draw with Fury, we could make a case for Wilder in the pantheon of all-time greats, but that didn’t happen either, so here we are. It’s no shame to be a fighter who was a title holder, a knockout artist, and a guy who won’t be easy to forget because of how nearly every one of his fights ended in a dramatic fashion. But there are far too many deserving candidates ahead of Wilder fighting in his own weight class right now. Usyk, Fury, and Joshua, too, have a better argument for induction than Wilder.
For Wilder, there are now only three questions he should be asking himself, and the answers to the first two, if he’s being truly honest, are painfully obvious:
1. Should I fight again? No.
2. Should I try to make a fight with Joshua somehow? HELL NO.
It’s the third question that I think will always haunt Wilder, who no one should ever say lacked heart in the ring, and that is:
3. Why didn’t I take that three-fight deal with Anthony Joshua on DAZN?
I don’t have an answer to that. I’m not sure Wilder does either, but whatever that grim truth is, it quite likely changed the course of his career, and he will never get that back.
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