By Keith Idec

Deontay Wilder first noticed some slippage in Wladimir Klitschko two years ago.

There wasn’t anything controversial about Klitschko’s unanimous-decision victory over Bryant Jennings in April 2015 at Madison Square Garden. There were signs that night, however, that Klitschko wasn’t the same dominant heavyweight champion he had been since stopping Chris Byrd to win the IBF championship nine years earlier.

“The Jennings fight, that was the first fight where it was most recognizable, like, ‘Is this man getting old?,’ ” Wilder said during a conference call this week. “You looked at him like, ‘Damn! He don’t look the same no more. Something’s going on.’ That was the start of making it seem, ‘Well, maybe he’s old.’ But he was still throwing out the punches and stuff like that.

“And then like, ‘Well, maybe he’s going through some stuff.’ Sometimes when you go through things in life – because we still have a normal life. We still go through family problems and different things, whether you have a spouse with you or not. You just never know with that fight. And then you see him come again with Fury, and he just don’t throw nothing at all. So it’s easy to make it like, ‘Damn! He need to get on out. He’s getting old,’ and stuff like that.”

Wilder still hasn’t dismissed the 41-year-old Klitschko’s chances of defying the odds Saturday when he challenges unbeaten British knockout artist Anthony Joshua (18-0, 18 KOs) in their heavyweight title fight at Wembley Stadium in London. The unbeaten WBC heavyweight champion senses losing to Fury finally reignited a fire within Klitschko (64-4, 53 KOs) that went out at some point during his 9½-year run as a heavyweight champion from 2006-2015.

If Bernard Hopkins could thrive well into his late 40s, Wilder sees no reason Klitschko can’t regain the IBF, IBO and WBA heavyweight championships in the biggest heavyweight title fight since Lennox Lewis knocked out Mike Tyson nearly 15 years ago. Klitschko’s challenge Saturday is even more imposing because he hasn’t fought in the 17 months since Fury upset him in November 2015 in Dusseldorf, Germany.

“Nowadays, anything is possible,” Wilder said. “We talk about age, because many times I said, ‘Well, maybe Father Time’s knocking at his door.’ That was only my opinion about it and stuff like that. But really, we all know that age is only but a number. It’s really how you feel inside of yourself. If you feel that you can go and you can still go and you really believe in that and have confidence in yourself, then that’s what you’re gonna do.

“The mind is a powerful thing to lose. And when you lose your mind, you lose your body. And with Klitschko, he feels like he’s still got it to the point where he done dedicated himself back to the sport. That’s why he says he’s obsessed, obsessed with regaining his titles. He’s like a new fighter.”

Handicappers have made Klitschko about a 2-1 underdog against the 27-year-old Joshua in a scheduled 12-round fight Showtime will televise live, beginning at 4:15 p.m. ET/1:15 p.m. PT. HBO will replay the Joshua-Klitschko bout at 11 p.m. ET/PT.

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.