By Norm Frauenheim
Deontay Wilder, another example of how heavyweight power frightens and fascinates, will attempt to ensure fans and mostly himself that his defining right is still there, scary as ever.
There’s a body of evidence, powerful in its own right, to doubt it.
Doubt him.
Wilder is 39 and coming off a couple of years when he looked a lot older. But his return to the ring, in Kansas Friday night against somebody named Tyrrell Herndon, is attracting attention.
Herndon doesn’t have a chance. At least, he shouldn’t. He’s a 37-year-old San Antonio heavyweight (24-5, 15 KOs), who is 3-0 since Top Rank prospect Richard Torrez Jr. knocked him out midway through the second round in October 2023.
Herndon, stopped in four of his five defeats, looks like the perfect springboard for Wilder’s promised resurrection in Wichita from a 1-4 record over his last five bouts, including a TKO loss to Zhilei Zhang 12 months ago and a unanimous decision to Joseph Parker in December 2023.
The promise is part of the promotion, which is calling the BLK Prime-streamed bout “Legacy Reloaded.” It’s a complicated legacy. Surprising, too. That’s why much of the media and perhaps fans are interested in Wilder’s risky comeback.
There are stakes, of course. If Wilder does enough to at least show there’s still potential for him to regain a piece of who he was, Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn is talking about a fight against faded Anthony Joshua. No telling what promoters would call Wilder-Joshua. “Past Prime Time?” Insert more punch lines here. But you get the idea.
By now, of course, it’s no secret there’s talk that Wilder is shot.
Even old rival Tyson Fury has come around to saying Wilder should retire. Fury heard some of the same talk, all rooted in a furious trilogy that ended with Fury’s wild win by 11th-round stoppage of Wilder in October 2021. It was a fight as violent as any over the last couple of decades. Wilder was down three times; Fury twice.
In the aftermath, neither was the same. Fury fought five more times, getting a gift decision over MMA fighter Francis Ngannou and losing twice to Oleksandr Usyk in his last two.
At first, Fury dismissed suggestions that the Wilder trilogy had taken something from him. Recently, however, he’s conceded that it did. Another big paycheck could always change Fury’s plans. He’s known to retire and un-retire at a dizzy pace and all at a price.
In recent comments, however, Fury has said that Wilder should retire for the same reason he’s still retired. They took their best from each other. Welcome inside the ring. That’s the price of admission.
Wilder, who never beat Fury, is perhaps trying to prove his old rival wrong. He insists he has gone to great lengths to re-discover the feared and fearless heavyweight he was on a run that saw him knock out his first 32 opponents.
It was extraordinary, especially for a fighter who never had been expected to do much. He wanted to play football at Alabama, the college powerhouse in Tuscaloosa, his hometown. He thought about basketball and enrolled in a junior college. But he was never a prospect on the field or on the court. Yet, he kept searching. Finally, he walked into a boxing gym. He was 20, ancient by boxing’s amateur stewards.
It was in the gym that he and trainers discovered he could throw a right hand with the kind of leverage only welterweight/middleweight Thomas Hearns had. It was deadly and dynamic. Few knew about it simply because of his age and modest entry to an old craft that has seen it all.
Wilder, perhaps boxing’s most unlikely heavyweight champion in the modern era, went his own way, in large part because he knew no other way.
He stood alone, an unlikely American to make the 2008 U.S. Olympic team. Then, he won bronze, the only medal won by an American in Beijing. Hence, he called himself The Bronze Bomber, after Joe Louis, who also grew up in Alabama. He entered the pros and suddenly began to unleash a right as lethal as any since Hearns.
Still, nobody believed. There were questions about his footwork, his defense, his ring smarts. Throughout it all, he continued to beat everyone in front of him until Fury, who halted his historical run with an amazing draw in Los Angeles in December 2019. Fury, the skilled boxer, fought him to a standstill, but not because of that versatile, clever skill set. Fury took the punch. Got up. Endured.
Only, Fury was able to break the myth and in the process fracture the way that Wilder saw himself. Without the power, there was no Wilder. The draw set up the rematches, both won by Fury who had in the process stripped Wilder of his identity. Over the subsequent years, Wilder says he labored — often in desperation — to repair and restore that identity.
Now, he insists he has.
He told Boxing Scene this week that he hired a sports psychologist to repair broken confidence and perhaps mend an identity crisis. Wilder’s fragile psychology has always been part of his story.
His emotions — like that right hand — have been there, ever present and a source of who he is.
Those emotions were also there about a year-and-a-half ago, outside of the ropes and inside a television studio for a reality TV series, The Traitors. It’s a show about friendship and betrayal. Wilder had a role as “a Friend.” But then he decided another so-called friend had betrayed him. He called him “a Traitor’’ and had him banished from the show. Later, Wilder broke down in tears and left the show before the third episode.
It was an emotional scene that fans and media had seen from Wilder throughout his boxing career, especially during the intense rivalry with Fury. A suspicious and angry Wilder alleged that Fury’s gloves had been illegally manipulated in the second fight, won by Fury in a seventh-round TKO in February 2020.
Wilder’s emotions were edgy and evident, there for all to see. It was a Mike Tyson-like moment, also a heavyweight whose mix of remembered power and emotion continue to draw an audience.
Over the years, that mix has been as genuine as it has been volatile. It’s why people watch. They might watch again Friday, just to see if Wilder has rediscovered any of what looked to be lost in fury and taken by Fury.
Benavidez Jr. under suspension for positive cocaine test
Jose Benavidez Jr., is under suspension for testing positive for cocaine after his stoppage Danny Rosenberger Feb. 1 on the Las Vegas undercard of brother David Benavidez victory over David Morrell.
Jose Benavidez, a former junior-welterweight champion, was also assessed a $3,750 fine. The Phoenix-born fighter, no reading in Seattle, will be under suspension through Oct. 31.
It’s not clear what the suspension will mean to the 33-year-old, who is best known for taking pound-for-pound contender Terence Crawford into the final round of a challenging welterweight date — October 2018 — in Omaha, Crawford’s hometown. Crawford stopped Benavidez in the twelfth.
Benavidez (28-3-1, )19 KOs) is 1-2-1 since then. His victory over Rosenberger was changed to no-contest. Benavidez, a 17-year-old national champion as a Phoenix amateur, will have to undergo a random testing process if he hopes to continue boxing.
The positive test had been rumored for weeks. The Nevada Commission ruled on it June 20.
