By Keith Idec

NEW YORK – Deontay Wilder can already hear the criticism he anticipates taking after March 3.

Luis Ortiz was too old. The Cuban southpaw hasn’t looked as dangerous in recent years as he once appeared and hasn’t been nearly active enough. Who knows what the 38-year-old Ortiz has used or hasn’t used to enhance his stature before fighting Wilder?

Wilder (39-0, 38 KOs) expects his doubters to use all those excuses when – not if, according to Wilder – he knocks out Ortiz (28-0, 24 KOs, 2 NC) in their scheduled 12-round fight for Wilder’s WBC heavyweight title March 3 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. His history of PED issues aside, the undefeated Ortiz is the most credible opponent Wilder will have faced since he beat Bermane Stiverne to win the WBC title three years ago.

The knockout artist from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, suspects beating Ortiz still won’t win over those that think his record is deceiving because he has beaten nothing more than a long list of C-level heavyweights or worse.

“If nobody don’t give me no credit on that, then that’s gonna be they sad life,” Wilder told BoxingScene.com recently. “May they be happy and go on about they miserable life. Because we’ve gotta remember, I never really got credit with nobody. We’ve gotta remember, when I fought Stiverne the first time, people already doubted me. They sent me off. They said he was better than me, he fought better competition than I and that he was gonna beat me. When I beat Stiverne’s ass, what did they do? They said, ‘Oh, he wasn’t nothing. He was a bum.’ Every time I fight somebody, they discredit me.”

Wilder wants so badly to prove himself against a top opponent, he insisted on rescheduling his fight against Ortiz even after their November 4 bout was scrapped due to Ortiz testing positive for two banned diuretics in September. The 32-year-old Wilder figures his skeptics expected him to fight someone less formidable than Ortiz once he destroyed Stiverne, Ortiz’s replacement, in their rematch November 4 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

“People don’t want me to fight Ortiz,” Wilder said, “because they don’t want me to say, ‘Hey, I fought one of the best and I beat him in great fashion.’ They want these guys to continue to fail drug tests or guys to continue to go to [fight] other fighters. They want that for my career, so I can’t say, ‘Hey, I fought this guy,’ or, ‘Hey, I fought that guy,’ or, ‘I beat this guy.’

“So with Ortiz, now the first time it was, ‘Ortiz is gonna do this.’ Now that I am willing to fight him even a second time, people are already doubting it now because they see that I’m not playing, that I’m for real about what I say and that I’m gonna do what I say. Whether people give me credit or not, I’m still gonna do what I say – I’m gonna knock him out. I’m gonna show him what it’s like to have his back on the canvas.”

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