The bigger they come, the harder they fall. Bob Fitzsimmons, 1862-1917
It is the nature of the meandering river of life that the vistas and postcards of the past can seem more lustrous than our current view. That which has passed becomes richer for the embellishment our memory imposes and the present dulls as our optimism dissipates with grey hair and midlife. Applied to boxing, it exaggerates our heroes and denigrates their successors.
This manifests as “Tommy levels Floyd”, “nobody beats peak Iron Mike”, or for older observers, “nobody punched like the Brown Bomber”. Ask Eddie Murphy. These opinions root deeply, becoming fixed in the landscape of our outlook. It closes us to the brilliance of now. The genius around us. Things new can still be great and may one day, if we are spared long enough, be the fixations of our future. Best to embrace the enjoyment they provide as if still young ourselves, than diminish them in the kangaroo court of our rose-filtered nostalgia.
Saturday’s knockout win, accumulated with a single right hand that travelled around 18 inches, continued to confirm that future history will smile on Deontay Wilder in much the same way it romantacises those bygone gladiators.
For years, Deontay Wilder’s long reign as WBC Heavyweight champion was undermined by the mediocrity of his opponents and the disorganised reality of his technique. Sure, he could knock fighters out, but few were sufficiently qualified to offer the long term respect his then unbeaten record could be presumed to provide.
And then he began boxing fighters better than he was. Ortiz, Fury. The devastation he was still able to wrought altered perspectives despite the wins, draws and losses he accumulated. Now, following the first fight in his heavyweight swan song, I may have to recognise him as the biggest single shot puncher I’ve ever seen in the division. An opinion that will be ridiculed by those eager to reminisce about the heroes of their youth but one I’m willing to defend. It really is time to embrace Wilder for the reality of what he is, rather than focus on that which he is not.
A knockout of Robert Helenius, a contender of gigantic proportion and solid if unspectacular ability, doesn’t add much that was not already known about the soon to be 37 year old American, but it does confirm just how electrifying a TV fighter he has become. Fury may be the king, Usyk the most complete and Joshua the most commercially important in recent years, but Wilder offers a level of excitement and jeopardy that elevates him above many of his contemporaries and makes him as important as any other fighter in the division irrespective of the absence of titles.
Critics are abundant for Wilder’s technical limitations. By all the conventions boxing has created over the past century or so regarding footwork, movement, offence and defence there are few to which Wilder conforms. But who the hell cares any more? When he lands. The night ends.
Unless you’re Tyson Fury of course. And Tyson Fury wouldn’t be Tyson Fury unless he’d co-existed with Deontay Wilder. A man who gives up 30-50 points in weight to the heavyweight giants of today, who often loses rounds as those with greater whit and acumen negate his awkward one and two punch attacks. Until they make a mistake. And the room goes dark and their eyes roll.
Bob Fitzsimmons, the uncrowned Sam Langford, Joe Louis and Sonny Liston, Big George Foreman of course, Mike Tyson. Maybe Dempsey and Marciano too. Lennox. Deontay Wilder has to be in that elevated group and may, as far as evidence shows, be pound for pound the biggest home run hitter of them all.
I could be wrong, I could be right, I’m just grateful to be witness to see him try and prove it.
BOXINGWRITER.CO.UK 
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