By Norm Frauenheim-
Deontay Wilder has more words than punches.
At last check, the words are rocking the social-media landscape. Wilder has been all over the place this week with talk that has been either condemned by those who hear death threats or dismissed by those who hear just another boxer with a cliched promise to kill an opponent.
Maybe, it has all been more grist for a media mill with an ever-escalating lust for the sensational.
Or, maybe, it’s just stupid.
Or, in perhaps a more cynical take,
it’s just another heated step up in an effort to hype a hard-to-sell fight. In a sport with an orderly business plan, Saturday would have been a rematch of Wilder’s compelling – and controversial — draw with Tyson Fury. Instead, we get Wilder versus Dominic Breazeale. In boxing, that’s called business as usual.
Still, some of what Wilder has said is hard to ignore.
Example:
“This is the only sport where you can kill a man and get paid for it at the same time. It’s legal, so why not use my right to do so?
“His life is on the line for this fight and I do mean his life. I’m still trying to get me a body on my record.”
A boxing license is not a license to kill. Death in the ring happens, sometimes by match-making so horrible as to be criminal and sometimes by licensing of fighters who should never have been cleared medically.
It is life-and-death drama. The fighters understand those stakes. So, too, do fans, who watch to witness their courage and to see them employ feet and hands in a marvelous balance of skill in the face of adversity. They fight to win and get paid. But there is no right to kill, no matter how often that one four-letter word is used and over-used.
Wilder is under huge criticism for what he said, especially from UK fans and retired fighters (Lennox Lewis, Frank Bruno) who thought judges robbed Fury of a decision and the World Boxing Council’s heavyweight title at Los Angeles’ Staples Center last December.
Boxing has pretty much heard it all, of course. Mike Tyson used to talk crazy throughout his days in what he called “the hurt business.’’ After a 1986 victory over Jesse Ferguson, Tyson said he wanted to drive Ferguson’s “(nose) bone up into his brain.” But Tyson didn’t say – never said — he wanted to “put a body on his record.’’
From this corner, it’s hard to explain what Wilder (40-0-1, 39 KOs) did say. Perhaps, that’s because I’m a Wilder fan. I like the guy. His right hand is his only dimension, yet it’s a dimension nobody has been able to counter, much less elude. Guess here, it will land all over again, finishing Breazeale (20-1, 18 KOs) in an early stoppage at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center (Showtime 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT). Increasingly, however, Wilder’s rants from the bully pulpit are baffling.
He gets on a roll, seemingly losing control in an undisciplined torrent of disconnected thoughts and words, sometimes funny and often angry. In a conference call about 10 days ago, Wilder said:
“People are simple-minded. My mindset is different. My mindset is so big that a spaceship can fit in it.’’
That, too, was baffling, perhaps cringe-worthy., But it was harmless, unlike this week’s controversial comment, which is enough to wonder whether that Wilder mindset is just an empty hangar.
