Robert Helenius has taken quite a circuitous route toward the biggest fight of his career Saturday night.
Eleven years ago, Helenius was an emerging heavyweight contender who was in the midst of a seven-month span in which he knocked out former title-holders Samuel Peter and Siarhei Liakhovich and defeated Dereck Chisora by split decision. Helenius suffered a torn tendon in his right shoulder, however, while training to face Chisora in December 2011.
That shoulder injury interrupted Helenius’ rise in the division, even after surgery and extensive rehabilitation. “The Nordic Nightmare” didn’t fight from March 2013 to March 2015.
A stunning, sixth-round knockout loss to France’s Johann Duhaupas in April 2016 later left fans dismayed by Helenius’ inability to reach the potential he once displayed. Subsequent defeats to England’s Dillian Whyte, who beat the Swedish-born Helenius by unanimous decision in October 2017, and American veteran Gerald Washington, who knocked out the Finland-based boxer in the eighth round of their fight in July 2019, seemingly signaled the end of the Helenius’ run as a legitimate contender.
A pair of consecutive technical knockouts of Adam Kownacki have earned Helenius a shot Saturday night, though, at pulling off another upset at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, where he first stopped Kownacki in the fourth round of a March 2020 fight FOX televised. Deontay Wilder is consistently listed as an 8-1 favorite to beat Helenius in their 12-round non-title bout, but the 38-year-old Helenius is thankful that he has earned this type of opportunity in a FOX Sports Pay-Per-View main event (9 p.m. ET; $74.99).
“I feel tremendously lucky,” Helenius said during a virtual press conference recently. “I’ve been in this game a long time, like 2010 and 2011 I was knocking out Lamon Brewster, Samuel Peter, Siarhei Liakhovich and other guys like that. After that, I got a severe injury and I was gone for a long time. And now it’s the first time I feel l’m back in the business.”
Helenius understands why fans and media might’ve written him off, particularly after Washington knocked him out three years ago.
“I think people forget,” Helenius said. “And I had been doing also bad fights after my comeback, so I don’t blame them, that some fans already gave up their hopes and dreams for me. And I understand that I did not do good for myself after [I came back]. It took like seven, eight years to get back to normal after I had that big operation on my shoulder.”
The 6-foot-6, 246-pound Helenius (31-3, 20 KOs) battered Brooklyn’s Kownacki (20-3, 15 KOs) throughout Helenius’ most recent fight, which took place last October 9 on the Tyson Fury-Wilder undercard at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. That one-sided fight finally was stopped toward the end of the sixth round, five rounds after Kownacki suffered a fractured orbital bone beneath his left eye.
The 36-year-old Wilder (42-2-1, 41 KOs), of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, will end a one-year layoff against Helenius as well. The former WBC champion hasn’t fought since the undefeated Fury violently knocked him out in the 11th round of their third title fight last October 9.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
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