Is Deontay Wilder The Future of the Heavyweight Division?

Published

13 years ago

October 5, 2012

WilderHayes Hogan5 Remember, Wilder started boxing very late, at age 21. Seen through that frame, his progress is truly impressive. (Hogan)

Casually bring up undefeated heavyweight prospect and 2008 Olympic bronze medalist Deontay Wilder in your favorite boxing discussion forum, and you’re sure to elicit one of two responses.

For some, he invokes all the gloriousness of America’s brilliant heavyweight history. He’s yesterday’s heavyweight hero, today. He’s the victorious amateur competitor who represented his country well on the world’s grandest stage, and he’s a surefire lock to be the next great heavyweight.

For others, he’s everything wrong with the sport of boxing. He’s too protected. He takes things too slow. He’s a carefully managed prop whose handlers are making the most of his Olympic fame until it’s time to cash out.

The 6’7” heavyweight prodigy from Alabama, whose much ballyhooed Olympic exploits came only three years after he first stepped into a boxing gym, is well aware of all that, too.

“Everybody has their own opinion,” the gregarious contender told me by phone earlier this week. “When you go with the good, you’ve got to go with the bad. I don’t really take any of it personal.”

It’s easy to see what people like about him as a fighter. Wilder has a pristine record. From a statistical point of view, you really can’t ask for anything more. He’s had twenty-five fights in his four-year professional career thus far, and he’s won every single one of them by knockout.

Still, his opposition has been less than stellar thus far, so fight fans have become increasingly anxious to see him fight against more worthy competition.

When I first talked to Wilder’s manager, Jay Deas, over a year and a half ago, he told me he and co-manager, Shelly Finkel were doing everything in their power to get their fighter as many rounds as possible. Deas told me his fighter’s total ring time up to that point, including his thirty or so amateur fights, had actually totaled only about four hours.

“I’m still trying to get him rounds!” Deas told me again this week. “He just got back today from Audley Harrison’s camp for the David Price fight.”

Yep, from the very beginning, Deas told me the idea was to take their time with Wilder’s progression. Slow and steady wins the race. While Wilder enjoyed brilliant success in his brief amateur career, he wasn’t necessarily as far along as your typical boxing prospect, someone who traditionally starts boxing at a very young age.

“Lot of people criticized me back then, too,” Wilder recalled. “They said I was too late. They said I was too green. I’m always playing catch-up! I was in there fighting guys that started when they were five and six years old, and here I am, a guy that started when he was twenty-one.”

Wilder believes in himself. You can hear it in his voice. He did back then, too, when he became perhaps the most inexperienced boxer to ever medal in the Olympic Games before, and he does so now that he’s set on becoming heavyweight champion of the world.

“I believe through hard work, anything is possible,” he said. “Just like my professional career now, I was hungry back then. I had a big heart. That’s the one you can’t measure – a guy’s heart. You can’t measure the intensity he has, the drive and the hunger.”

He said the last part emphatically.

“When I set my mind to something, there is nothing that is going to get in the way of what I’ve got to do.”

Say what you want about his level of opposition, he’s knocked out every single one of them and that’s no easy feat. We see it all the time in boxing: some palooka no one has ever heard of goes the distance with a world class fighter.

While we don’t know if Wilder is a world class fighter yet, we do know that no one has even come close to going the distance with him.

Wilder said the knockout streak isn’t really something he worries about. He knows it’s there in the back of his mind, but it doesn’t dictate what he tries to get done.

“I just go in there and basically just try to work on what I have been working on in the gym,” he said. “I try to be perfect in there, because we train for perfection.”

His record is perfect so far, but he’s not quite perfect as a fighter. Like any young prizefighter with limited experience, Wilder has some flaws. He tends to leave his power hand out in front of him too long after delivering a punch, and he’s yet to put together the type of consistent jab that, with his size and quickness, would help make him closer to invincible.

Deas and company have him on the right track, though. If you watch Wilder’s progression, you can see definite and consistent improvement in his footwork and movement as he’s moved through the ranks. Moreover, he’s gone from being borderline wild to increasingly patient. And, there’s the power, of course, which is the one thing you just have to be born with.

“I keep telling everybody, I still don’t know the measurement of my power,” he told me. “It kind of scares me. Even sparring at some of these camps, I’ve licked some of these guys up pretty good and they tell me the same, you know.”

Wilder has been in camp with some of the very best heavyweights in the world, guys like David Haye and Tomasz Adamek, so if that’s indeed the case then it bodes quite well for his future in the division.

But fight fans are ready to see something now, not later.

When I talked to Deas this week, he told me he was excited about an upcoming opportunity he believed Wilder was about to have to with Showtime in December. Sure enough, reports have recently surfaced that Wilder will be the showcase fighter for Showtime’s December 15^th date. Deas says when he saw Wilder’s promoter, Golden Boy Promotions, sign a promotional deal earlier this year with six of the 2012 men’s U.S. Olympic team members, he immediately thought it’d be a great idea to have Deontay as the headliner for some of their early cards. After all, he told me, Wilder remains the last man to actually medal at the Olympics.

It appears that will come to pass now, and Wilder couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity to show his skills to a larger audience. While he’s been featured on ESPN’s Friday Night Fights as well as some Fox Sports shows, this will be his first appearance on a major boxing network’s broadcast and could help position him as one of Golden Boy Promotions’ premier fighters.

“Everybody gets an opportunity to really prove themselves, and I feel like my opportunity is just around the corner,” Wilder said.

An opponent hasn’t been announced yet, but Deas mentioned a level of competition fight fans could really get excited about. He said he wants Wilder in there with someone who can make him work, and that they’ve tried that in the past but Wilder has just knocked everyone out so it’s time to up the ante.

Wilder says he’s ready.

If you follow him on twitter, you know he’s vocal about who he wants to fight (everyone) and how he believes he will beat any fighter he faces. He’s even mentioned the Klitschko brothers as possible competition despite never even having faced someone ranked in the top ten.

This last week, he got into a heated twitter battle with another American heavyweight prospect, Bryant Jennings. Wilder told me he’d be glad to fight Jennings, but that he has to let his management team do their job. Still, he understands the mentality of fight fans who might not understand why the fight wasn’t made.

“Fans just want to see the fight,” he said. “They don’t care if it’s for one dollar – they just want the fight. I know that.”

I asked him specifically about the dust-up with Jennings. While their back and forth was heated at times, it also seemed good natured in a way, like some sort of verbal sparring competition.

“I have nothing personal against the guy,” he told me. “I wish him well. I’m sure he feels the same way.”

Wilder told me that he likes to come back at people just as strong as they come at him whether their fighters or fans. He’s competitive that way. It’s all good natured though, and he wishes them well at the end of it.

All in all, maybe the best thing about Wilder is something you can really only get a sense of when interacting with him. It’s not really identifiable in YouTube clips of his knockout wins, and I’ve yet to really read about it anywhere else either. He simply has a tremendous attitude. He absolutely beams with excitement about his life as a fighter, and he genuinely seems to look forward to accomplishing his goals no matter how long it takes him.

“I think about it all the time,” he told me when I asked him about working to become heavyweight champion of the world. “I can’t wait. I can’t wait for my opportunity.”

Wilder said he was being patient. He said whoever takes over for the Klitschko brothers will have to be special, and he believes he can be that guy. We ended our conversation looking ahead to what he hopes to be his future, and why maybe everyone might someday be wild about Deontay Wilder.

“I want to be the one that takes both of the [Klitschko] brothers out of this game,” he said, at once both brash and affable. “When I beat them, I want them to be happy they are out of the game they’ve been holding down the whole time, and I want them to say ‘Deontay Wilder took us out, and we wouldn’t be more proud of anyone to hold our titles while we are retired and gone than him’”.

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Thomas Hauser’s Literary Notes: Johnny Greaves Tells a Sad Tale

Published

2 days ago

May 11, 2025

Thomas Hauser

Johnny Greaves was a professional loser. He had one hundred professional fights between 2007 and 2013, lost 96 of them, scored one knockout, and was stopped short of the distance twelve times. There was no subtlety in how his role was explained to him: “Look, Johnny; professional boxing works two ways. You’re either a ticket-seller and make money for the promoter, in which case you get to win fights. If you don’t sell tickets but can look after yourself a bit, you become an opponent and you fight to lose.”

By losing, he could make upwards of one thousand pounds for a night‘s work.

Greaves grew up with an alcoholic father who beat his children and wife. Johnny learned how to survive the beatings, which is what his career as a fighter would become. He was a scared, angry, often violent child who was expelled from school and found solace in alcohol and drugs.

The fighters Greaves lost to in the pros ran the gamut from inept local favorites to future champions Liam Walsh, Anthony Crolla, Lee Selby, Gavin Rees, and Jack Catterall. Alcohol and drugs remained constants in his life. He fought after drinking, smoking weed, and snorting cocaine on the night before – and sometimes on the day of – a fight. On multiple occasions, he came close to committing suicide. His goal in boxing ultimately became to have one hundred professional fights.

On rare occasions, two professional losers – “journeymen,” they’re called in The UK – are matched against each other. That was how Greaves got three of the four wins on his ledger. On September 29, 2013, he fought the one hundredth and final fight of his career against Dan Carr in London’s famed York Hall. Carr had a 2-42-2 ring record and would finish his career with three wins in ninety outings. Greaves-Carr was a fight that Johnny could win. He emerged triumphant on a four-round decision.

The Johnny Greaves Story, told by Greaves with the help of Adam Darke (Pitch Publishing) tells the whole sordid tale. Some of Greaves’s thoughts follow:

* “We all knew why we were there, and it wasn’t to win. The home fighters were the guys who had sold all the tickets and were deemed to have some talent. We were the scum. We knew our role. Give some young prospect a bit of a workout, keep out of the way of any big shots, lose on points but take home a wedge of cash, and fight again next week.”

* “If you fought too hard and won, then you wouldn’t get booked for any more shows. If you swung for the trees and got cut or knocked out, then you couldn’t fight for another 28 days. So what were you supposed to do? The answer was to LOOK like you were trying to win but be clever in the process. Slip and move, feint, throw little shots that were rangefinders, hold on, waste time. There was an art to this game, and I was quickly learning what a cynical business it was.”

* “The unknown for the journeyman was always how good your opponent might be. He could be a future world champion. Or he might be some hyped-up nightclub bouncer with a big following who was making lots of money for the promoter.”

* “No matter how well I fought, I wasn’t going to be getting any decisions. These fights weren’t scored fairly. The referees and judges understood who the paymasters were and they played the game. What was the point of having a go and being the best version of you if nobody was going to recognize or reward it?”

* “When I first stepped into the professional arena, I believed I was tough. believed that nobody could stop me. But fight by fight, those ideas were being challenged and broken down. Once you know that you can be hurt, dropped and knocked out, you’re never quite the same fighter.”

* “I had started off with a dream, an idea of what boxing was and what it would do for me. It was going to be a place where I could prove my toughness. A place that I could escape to and be someone else for a while. For a while, boxing was that place. But it wore me down to the point that I stopped caring. I’d grown sick and tired of it all. I wished that I could feel pride at what I’d achieved. But most of the time, I just felt like a loser.”

* “The fights were getting much more difficult, the damage to my body and my psyche taking longer and longer to repair after each defeat. I was putting myself in more and more danger with each passing fight. I was getting hurt more often and stopped more regularly. Even with the 28-day [suspensions], I didn’t have time to heal. I was staggering from one fight to the next and picking up more injuries along the way.”

* “I was losing my toughness and resilience. When that’s all you’ve ever had, it’s a hard thing to accept. Drink and drugs had always been present in my life. But now they became a regular part of my pre-fight preparation. It helped to shut out the fear and quieted the thoughts and worries that I shouldn’t be doing this anymore.”

* “My body was broken. My hands were constantly sore with blisters and cuts. I had early arthritis in my hip and my teeth were a mess. I looked an absolute state and inside I felt worse. But I couldn’t stop fighting yet. Not before the 100.”

* “I had abused myself time after time and stood in front of better men, taking a beating when I could have been sensible and covered up. At the start, I was rarely dropped or stopped. Now it was becoming a regular part of the game. Most of the guys I was facing were a lot better than me. This was mainly about survival.”

* “Was my brain f***ed from taking too many punches? I knew it was, to be honest. I could feel my speech changing and memory going. I was mentally unwell and shouldn’t have been fighting but the promoters didn’t care. Johnny Greaves was still a good booking. Maybe an even better one now that he might get knocked out.”

* “Nobody gave a f*** about me and whether I lived or died. I didn’t care about that much either. But the thought of being humiliated, knocked out in front of all those people; that was worse than the thought of dying. The idea of being exposed for what I was – a nobody.”

* “I was a miserable bastard in real life. A depressive downbeat mouthy little f***er. Everything I’ve done has been to mask the feeling that I’m worthless. That I have no value. The drinks and the drugs just helped me to forget that for a while. I still frighten myself a lot. My thoughts scare me. Do I really want to be here for the next thirty or forty years? I don’t know. If suicide wasn’t so impactful on people around you, I would have taken that leap. I don’t enjoy life and never have.”

So . . . Any questions?

****

Steve Albert was Showtime’s blow-by-blow commentator for two decades. But his reach extended far beyond boxing.

Albert’s sojourn through professional sports began in high school when he was a ball boy for the New York Knicks. Over the years, he was behind the microphone for more than a dozen teams in eleven leagues including four NBA franchises.

Putting the length of that trajectory in perspective . . . As a ballboy, Steve handed bottles of water and towels to a Knicks back-up forward named Phil Jackson. Later, they worked together as commentators for the New Jersey Nets. Then Steve provided the soundtrack for some of Jackson’s triumphs when he won eleven NBA championships as head coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers.

It’s also a matter of record that Steve’s oldest brother, Marv, was arguably the greatest play-by-play announcer in NBA history. And brother Al enjoyed a successful career behind the microphone after playing professional hockey.

Now Steve has written a memoir titled A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Broadcast Booth. Those who know him know that Steve doesn’t like to say bad things about people. And he doesn’t here. Nor does he delve into the inner workings of sports media or the sports dream machine. The book is largely a collection of lighthearted personal recollections, although there are times when the gravity of boxing forces reflection.

“Fighters were unlike any other professional athletes I had ever encountered,” Albert writes. “Many were products of incomprehensible backgrounds, fiercely tough neighborhoods, ghettos and, in some cases, jungles. Some got into the sport because they were bullied as children. For others, boxing was a means of survival. In many cases, it was an escape from a way of life that most people couldn’t even fathom.”

At one point, Steve recounts a ringside ritual that he followed when he was behind the microphone for Showtime Boxing: “I would precisely line up my trio of beverages – coffee, water, soda – on the far edge of the table closest to the ring apron. Perhaps the best advice I ever received from Ferdie [broadcast partner Ferdie Pacheco] was early on in my blow-by-blow career – ‘Always cover your coffee at ringside with an index card unless you like your coffee with cream, sugar, and blood.’”

Writing about the prelude to the infamous Holyfield-Tyson “bite fight,” Albert recalls, “I remember thinking that Tyson was going to do something unusual that night. I had this sinking feeling in my gut that he was going to pull something exceedingly out of the ordinary. His grousing about Holyfield’s head butts in the first fight added to my concern. [But] nobody could have foreseen what actually happened. Had I opened that broadcast with, ‘Folks, tonight I predict that Mike Tyson will bite off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear,’ some fellas in white coats might have approached me and said, ‘Uh, Steve, could you come with us.'”

And then there’s my favorite line in the book: “I once asked a fighter if he was happily married,” Albert recounts. “He said, ‘Yes, but my wife’s not.'”

“All I ever wanted was to be a sportscaster,” Albert says in closing. “I didn’t always get it right, but I tried to do my job with honesty and integrity. For forty-five years, calling games was my life. I think it all worked out.”

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His next book – The Most Honest Sport: Two More Years Inside Boxing – will be published this month and is available for preorder at:

https://www.amazon.com/Most-Honest-Sport-Inside-Boxing/dp/1955836329

In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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Argentina’s Fernando Martinez Wins His Rematch with Kazuto Ioka

Published

2 days ago

May 11, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Argentina's-Fernando-Martinez-Wins-His-Rematch-with-Kazuto-Ioka

In an excellent fight climaxed by a furious 12^th round, Argentina’s Fernando Daniel Martinez came off the deck to win his rematch with Kazuto Ioka and retain his piece of the world 115-pound title. The match was staged at Ioka’s familiar stomping grounds, the Ota-City General Gymnasium in Tokyo.

In their first meeting on July 7 of last year in Tokyo, Martinez was returned the winner on scores of 117-111, 116-112, and a bizarre 120-108. The rematch was slated for late December, but Martinez took ill a few hours before the weigh-in and the bout was postponed.

The 33-year-old Martinez, who came in sporting a 17-0 (9) record, was a 7-2 favorite to win the sequel, but there were plenty of reasons to favor Ioka, 36, aside from his home field advantage. The first Japanese male fighter to win world titles in four weight classes, Ioka was 3-0 in rematches and his long-time trainer Ismael Salas was on a nice roll. Salas was 2-0 last weekend in Times Square, having handled upset-maker Rolly Romero and Reito Tsutsumi who was making his pro debut.

But the fourth time was not a charm for Ioka (31-4-1) who seemingly pulled the fight out of the fire in round 10 when he pitched the Argentine to the canvas with a pair of left hooks, but then wasn’t able to capitalize on the momentum swing.

Martinez set a fast pace and had Ioka fighting off his back foot for much of the fight. Beginning in round seven, Martinez looked fatigued, but the Argentine was conserving his energy for the championship rounds. In the end, he won the bout on all three cards: 114-113, 116-112, 117-110.

Up next for Fernando Martinez may be a date with fellow unbeaten Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez, the lineal champion at 115. San Antonio’s Rodriguez is a huge favorite to keep his title when he defends against South Africa’s obscure Phumelela Cafu on July 19 in Frisco, Texas.

As for Ioka, had he won today’s rematch, that may have gotten him over the hump in so far as making it into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. True, winning titles in four weight classes is no great shakes when the bookends are only 10 pounds apart, but Ioka is still a worthy candidate.

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Emanuel Navarrete Survives a Bloody Battle with Charly Suarez in San Diego

Published

2 days ago

May 11, 2025

David A. Avila

Emanuel-Navarrete-Survives-a-Bloody-Battle-with-Charly-Suarez-in-San-Diego

In a torrid battle Mexico’s Emanuel “Vaquero” Navarrete and his staccato attack staved off the herky-jerky non-stop assaults of Philippine’s Charly Suarez to win by technical decision and retain the WBO super feather world title on Saturday.

What do they feed these guys?

Navarrete (40-2-1, 32 KOs) and his elongated arms managed to connect enough to compensate against the surprising Suarez (18-1, 10 KOs) who wowed the crowd at Pechanga Arena in San Diego.

An accidental clash of heads opened a cut on the side of Navarrete’s left eye and forced a stoppage midway through the fight.

From the opening round Navarrete used his windmill style of attack with punches from different angles that caught Suarez multiple times early. It did not matter. Suarez fired back with impunity and was just as hungry to punch it out with the Mexican fighter.

It was savage.

Every time Navarrete connected solidly, he seemed to pause and check out the damage. Bad idea. Suarez would immediately counter with bombs of his own and surprise the champion with his resilience and tenacity.

Wherever they found Suarez they should look for more, because the Filipino fighter from Manila was ferocious and never out of his depth.

Around the sixth round the Mexican fighter seemed a little drained and puzzled at the tireless attacks coming from Suarez. During an exchange of blows a cut opened up on Navarrete and it was ruled an accidental clash of heads by the referee. Blood streamed down the side of Navarrete’s face and it was cleared by the ringside physician.

But at the opening of the eighth round, the fight was stopped and the ringside physician ruled the cut was too bad to continue. The California State Athletic Commission looked at tape of the round when the cut opened to decipher if it was an accidental butt or a punch that caused the cut. It was unclear so the referee’s call of accidental clash of heads stood as the final ruling.

Score cards from the judges saw Navarrete the winner by scores of 78-75, 77-76 twice. He retains the WBO title.

Interim IBF Lightweight Title

The sharp-shooting Raymond “Danger” Muratalla (23-0, 17 KOs) maneuvered past Russia’s Zaur Abdullaev (20-2, 12 KOs) by unanimous decision to win the interim IBF lightweight title after 12 rounds.

Both fighters were strategic in their approach with Muratalla switching from orthodox to southpaw at various times of the fight. Neither fighter was ever able to dominant any round.

Defense proved the difference between the two lightweights. Muratalla was able to slip more blows than Abdullaev and that proved the difference. The fighter from Fontana, California was able to pierce Abdullaev’s guard more often than not, especially with counter punches.

Abdullaev was never out of the fight. The Russian fighter was able to change tactics and counter the counters midway through the fight. It proved effective especially to the body. But it was not enough to offset Muratalla’s accuracy.

There were no knockdowns and after 12 rounds the judges scored it 118-110, 119-109 twice for Muratalla who now becomes the mandatory for the IBF lightweight title should Vasyl Lomachenko return to defend it.

Muratalla was brief.

“He was a tough fighter,” said Muratalla. “My defense is something I work on a lot.”

Perla Wins

Super flyweight Perla Bazaldua (2-0) eased past Mona Ward (0-2) with a polished display of fighting at length and inside.

Combination punching and defense allowed Bazaldua to punch in-between Ward’s attacks and force the St. Louis fighter to clinch repeatedly. But Ward hung in there despite taking a lot of blows. After four rounds the Los Angeles-based Bazaldua was scored the winner 40-36 on all three cards. Bazaldua signed a long term contract with Top Rank in March.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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