Deontay Wilder hopes his June contest with Tyrell Anthony Herndon will be a springboard to fighting one day for the undisputed heavyweight title.
The 39-year-old is not calling his fight in Wichita at the Charles Koch Arena a comeback, because he says he has not been away following consecutive defeats to Joseph Parker and Zhilei Zhang.
“They think when someone has left the ring for a significant amount of time, and then they return, they feel like it’s a comeback,” Wilder told BoxingScene. “But it’s never a comeback. It’s always just returning from the ring. You leave the ring and you return to it.”
By Wilder time he does fight Herndon, who is 24-5 (15 KOs) and from San Antonio, Texas, he would have been out for a year, but the 43-4-1 (42 KOs) Wilder – a former long-time WBC champion – still wants the chance to fight for all four belts.
“I mean, I want whoever is at the top,” said the former champion from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “I want whoever is going to make great fights, period. I don’t have a list of names. I mean, if a fight gets me to my end goal of where I want to go, then hell, let’s go. We all in the same division. We already know that you’re always close to a title fight. One fight, one night. And so I don’t have a list of fighters that I want. I want everybody that’s in my way from me getting to where I need to go. If you get in my way, I want you. I want to take your head off.”
The heavyweight division has seen Tyson Fury retire, Anthony Joshua rest after being injured in his fight with Daniel Dubois last September, and Oleksandr Usyk – who meets Dubois in the summer – reign supreme.
Does Wilder believe Usyk is the best of the current crop?
“I mean, that’s who got the belts,” Wilder said. “So, you know, whether you want to agree or not.”
For years, Wilder and Joshua talked about fighting, but it never happened. Is there unfinished business?
“I mean, we all know,” Wilder stated.
Then, somewhat cryptically of the Joshua fight never happening, which it likely would have had Joshua not lost his first fight to Andy Ruiz, Wilder said: “That’s why I would have been the unified undisputed heavyweight champion of the world years ago [when he had the WBC belt and Joshua had the remaining titles]. Many people know that but unfortunately other people had the opportunity to even do that [make the fight]. They didn’t even have nowhere near my status of being able to be an elite fighter or what would make a historic fight for years to come. But that’s not here nor there. Everything I’ve said in this business, because of how I look at this business, is because of how I know certain things in this business.”