Deontay Wilder is back this week, and he returns with his eyes wide open. After 17 years in the sport, a long WBC heavyweight title reign, and entering the professional ranks off the back of a bronze medal at the Beijing Olympics, the former champion is taking nothing for granted.
Now aged 39, and with a 43-3-1 (42 KOs) record, the Tuscaloosa, Alabama native meets Tyrrell Anthony Herndon in Wichita on Friday, and Wilder says his motivations to return are selfish. And while he is looking forward to getting back into the ring, he is not so keen on the business of boxing.
Wilder said he feels like the business side of the sport has done him no favors.
“I don’t feel, I know it has,” Wilder told BoxingScene, when asked whether boxing has served him badly. “But at the end of the day, the business is not a sport. I don’t even like when people call it a sport. Why do y’all call it a sport? Tell me. Why would people call this a sport, this business a sport? What makes this a sport first and foremost? It’s just because men get together and they have sportsmanship inside of a business. It doesn’t make it a sport. Just go even deeper with what sports actually provide for their athletes. So you calling us athletes? If it’s a sport, then you got to be an athlete. In boxing, you think we’re athletes? Yeah, we could be…. But as sports are concerned, as I’m concerned with sports, boxing don’t have nothing nowhere where actual sports provide for the athletes. In boxing, it’s a brutal business. It’s all about yourself.”
Wilder knows, and has experienced it in his fights, that when the going gets tough, nobody is going to be taking punches for him, no one is going to feel his pain, and no one else but him is going to be able to serve up a fight-ending Hail Mary.
He last fought when stopped by Zhilei Zhang in Saudi Arabia, stopped in the kind of violent fashion in which he was used to taking others out.
“Although it’s a team effort, it’s an individual consequence that you may face once you step in the ring,” Wilder explained. “If you get your head bashed… as [far as] you being my coach, do you think you feel that? If I get tired and this man [his opponent] ain’t tired, he’s still coming, do y’all get to feel that? If I’m tired and I need water and I’m thirsty and then my mouth is dry and we’ve still got two minutes left, can you feel that? It’s a team effort. So when you go back to the corner, that man that felt every little thing that has to be, whether it is in the first round or whether it’s the 11th round or it’s the final round, ain’t nobody feeling nothing. Not one individual in that arena [feels it] but those two men that are facing each other.”
But it is the business and structure of boxing that is one of Wilder’s main gripes. Although he has made many multi-million-dollar paydays, and has earned generational wealth, he still feels boxing needs to do more to provide for those who have not been so fortunate. Many other sports, of course, have centralized governing bodies, with unions, pension funds, and other benefits.
The waters of boxing are considerably choppier – and shark infested.
“After the benefits that other athletes get outside of their business, even in this side, let’s go as simple as insurance for a fighter or insurance for athletes,” Wilder continued. “Other athletes, other sports, they are covered 100 per cent. And if you even go deeper, they allow some of their girlfriends to get insurance to benefit off athletes’ insurance. “Not in boxing, you got to have your own, don’t you know that? You got to at least have a life policy. You got to have your own insurance in here because you don’t even know if the promoter will really pay for the damn insurance, although they need a million dollars to put on a fight. But that don’t mean that your bills are going to get paid. I’ve been there, done it, man. You know what I’m saying? I’m like a veteran. So this is not a sport to me at all. This is strictly business. From the time we train to get out of a mindset to be able to hurt another man that’s trying to hurt him, to the mindset of getting my mind ready so I can be able to breathe, my breathing exercises, my fundamentals of being able to defend myself, to go at an offensive state when it’s time. And this is what we call staying alive; survival. This is a survival business, baby. One punch, that’s it. We’ve just seen it many times. I don’t think no sport is like this, if you want to consider it a sport.”
Although Wilder is full of vitriol at the business of boxing, he says he is not angry, because he knows the game and how it works.
“You got to make sure you keep yourself around people that you can trust,” Wilder said. “And sometimes that can go wrong. Because in this business, it’s the green-eyed monster. And with the green-eyed monster, the green-eyed monster really has no loyalty to anyone. “Because everybody trying to get paid.”
Wilder worked with PBC for years, and most recently was on Riyadh Season shows.
He is more than happy to work with both entities again.
“Of course,” he said. “I got a great relationship with the Saudis. I mean, they’re stand-up guys in my eyes. I haven’t seen differently. And with PBC, the same way. I still got a lot [of] love for PBC, and a lot of other networks. I don’t have no issues at all with any other networks that you see me on, or you wouldn’t see me on them.”
But there are others, Wilder claims, who have taken advantage of him.
He says he has unburdened himself of “the leeches” who were around him. “I got proof of a lot of shit. You know what I mean? A lot of shit. I’m cutting all of my burdens loose from me. All the leeches, all the ones that thought they loved me, but in the end, at the same time, under my nose, stealing from me. Lying to me when I’m giving you my heart. I’m risking my life to provide. What else do you want? Now, like I say, I’m selfish.”
Wilder has plenty to prove all over again. There are many who are writing him off after the losses to Joseph Parker and Zhang, and there are plenty who contend that neither he nor Fury have been the same after their third violent fight. Wilder believes he has a lot left to give.
“I risk my life for y’all’s entertainment. So when it comes to Deontay Wilder, I keep it real,” he added.
“I tell it how it is. And some people may, like I’ve said many times, some people may take my truth as an excuse. That’s how you receive it. I’m only giving you the truth. And if the terminology says the truth has set you free, then as a man that’s telling his truth, I’m free.
“I sleep good at night. I don’t have nothing to be worried about. I don’t have no worries.
“I don’t have to keep up with no lies because I don’t tell them. It takes more time to keep up with it and refresh it. Many guys know that in this business, yeah, they always got to lie. It’s the concept of the business, to lie, fake it, and make it so people can get knocked off about what's really going on or how a person really is feeling. But I don't have to. I don’t have to do that. I’m a real man. I keep it real as possible with people. Everything I’ve stated has been true.”
Tris Dixon covered his first amateur boxing fight in 1996. The former editor of Boxing News, he has written for a number of international publications and newspapers, including GQ and Men’s Health, and is a board member for the Ringside Charitable Trust and the Ring of Brotherhood. He has been a broadcaster for TNT Sports and hosts the popular “Boxing Life Stories” podcast. Dixon is a British Boxing Hall of Famer, an International Boxing Hall of Fame elector, is on The Ring ratings panel and is the author of five boxing books, including “Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing” (shortlisted for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year), “Warrior: A Champion’s Search for His Identity” (shortlisted for the Sunday Times International Sportsbook of the Year) and “The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing’s Wastelands.” You can reach him @trisdixon on X and Instagram.