Tag: Deontay Wilder

Deontay Wilder is currently trying to move heaven and earth in order to buy the time he needs to master a game plan that he feels will enable him to beat Tyson Fury. The 35-year-old was brutally beaten by Fury in a Las Vegas showdown in February, and it’s becoming apparent that he won’t step into the ring with the Englishman again until he has developed a technique that will give him a better chance of winning. 

It’s been smoke and mirrors for Wilder since February, though, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that this is a man running scared.

At first, the Wilder camp was incredibly vocal about why the fight went the way it did and began to cite problems with Fury’s gloves as the reason why the American was so comprehensively beaten. Now, fight fans around the world understand that excuses are part and parcel of the sport, but this particular jibe was fairly unforgivable as it cast aspersions over Fury’s professional conduct. However disappointed you are at suffering the humiliation of defeat, accusing a fellow boxer of cheating is an extraordinary low blow. It even prompted Fury to release the video of his hands being wrapped.

Up until that stage, the Fury camp hadn’t bothered to get tangled up in a war of words given that they felt no need to – Fury’s boxing had done all the talking that was required. No one from the Englishman’s side even bit back that hard when Wilder blamed his ring walk costume on the night for the defeat, stating it was too heavy and killed his legs before he got to the ring.

Despite Wilder’s best efforts to muddy the waters, his excuses have been far from plausible and have only made him appear quite desperate. One of his confidants may have actually said this to him in a roundabout way as the American seems to have gone underground, with radio silence the only thing that can be heard.

It may have occurred to Wilder that a list of poorly thought up excuses was not the way to avenge himself and, in actual fact, a win in the ring would see his reputation restored to where it was before Fury brutally exposed him to the watching world. To give the American his due, he seems to have cottoned on to what is required of him if he wants to stand any chance of beating Fury. Indeed, the odds are heavily stacked against him – betting sites like Space Casino, for instance, have Wilder as far out as 12/5 to win. Those odds probably flatter Wilder, given that the general feeling is that he has a mountain the size of Everest to climb if he is going to triumph.

The problem is, an extra few months in the gym isn’t going to be the magic bullet for the Alabaman. On the contrary, Wilder would need to go back to his childhood some 30 years ago to begin his boxing education again if he wanted to beat Tyson Fury.

Tyson Fury, you see, is an anomaly that has been boxing since he could stand. His father, John Fury, taught him the importance of being agile as a boxer and for the rest of Fury’s life, up until now, he has been expertly honing that skill. In addition, Fury grew to be over two metres tall and now weighs 115kg.  As mentioned, Fury is an oddity of some magnitude. 

Wilder can’t bridge the quiet frankly enormous gulf in class between them by simply going through a few more sparring sessions. The American is simply delaying the inevitable and will be taken to school once more by Fury should they ever fight again.