Photo Credit: Stephanie Trapp/SHOWTIME®
He may not be the fight racket’s consensus heavyweight king (a legitimate buffoon holds that honor) but Deontay Wilder, a 6-foot-7, 226-pound child of Dixie, can at least lay claim to being its American incarnation – a lesser distinction for sure, shorn of the panache with which it has long been associated but, as far as pugilistic nomenclature goes, it still carries respectable cachet. Such was the aura of the heavyweight champion that it prompted Norman Mailer to surmise that “It is like being the big toe of God. You have nothing to measure yourself by.” And accordingly, for a time, there was an expectation that our heavyweight titleholders would be accountable for attracting and introducing large swaths of the general public to boxing. If recent heavyweight champions have shunned the ambassadorial side of their work for the better part of two decades, Wilder, to his credit, shares no qualms about accepting the burden of this task.
“I definitely feel that it’s my responsibility to uphold and keep the sport alive,” Wilder stated on the phone from his hometown of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He defends his WBC title tonight against Chris Arreola in a bout that will be featured on prime time FOX at the Legacy Arena in Birmingham, just a few miles outside of his hometown. Wilder paused, then added, “I don’t feel no pressure. I just really feel that I’m the one to bring boxing back.”
“Bringing it back” would presumably mean to the time when Mailer wrote his famous words. Mailer, of course, had a specific referent in mind in Muhammad Ali, whose unshakable charisma and theatrics convinced the rabble-rousing writer to see, even amid the din of contemporaneity, that Ali was as singular a figure as the world would ever see. He had long been absent from public life, a fraction of his former buoyant self, but his recent death still shook the world into a standstill. “Man, when I heard about it, I felt sad, real sad,” Wilder admitted, acutely aware that he was, in his own way, an extension of that man’s achievements. “It felt like a family member died.” For Wilder, Ali’s death did not bring so much as closure than clarity, a re-focusing of ambition.
“When my time is up, I definitely want to be remembered for great things like him in my era, “Wilder asserted. “So with that being said, I already know what I have to do. I already know what type of work I need to display inside and outside of the ring. I understand that and that’s what I look forward to doing.
“And besides, I won my belt on Ali’s birthday (against Bermane Stiverne on Jan. 17, 2015). I feel like that was a sign for me that he was passing the torch to me – that I can take care of this sport and handle it very well. That’s my goal and mission. I want to make it the best that it’s ever been. I want (my legacy) to be so huge that it’s gonna be a hard act to follow, so that many guys are not going to be able to follow behind me because they’re not going to have the discipline to train, to keep up with me or surpass what I’ve done. Only the future will tell how far I will go from here.”
It’s easy to chalk such talk up to sports-speak, that never-ending humdrum of egregious analogizing and triumphal claims of destiny. But with Wilder, his bluster – distinct from that of, say, Adrien Broner (too silly) or Keith Thurman (too defensive) – has always been limned with honesty and charitable regard for others. Lionel Trilling, the great 20th century critic, once contended that society had shifted from valuing public displays of honesty, or sincerity, to one that valued interior forms of belief or authenticity.
In distinguishing between himself and his peers, regardless of weight class, Wilder made it clear that he is the embodiment of unadorned transparency.
“You got a lot of great fighters out here and some fighters may feel the same way but I really mean it. And one thing about me between other fighters – some fighters say things just for the camera, for the media, just to sound off just to get fame – I don’t care about fame. I say it because I really believe it and I really mean it and this is what I really want to do – so I’m gonna do it. Everything that I said I was gonna do, I’ve spoken about it. And if I didn’t do it, I got damn near close to doing it. So here we go.”
The exuberance of youth and freshness inflects Wilder’s words. For a fighter at the traditionally peak age of 30, still, Wilder is no fledgling.
“I wouldn’t necessarily say that I’m in my prime,” Wilder mused. “You know, I started this game late – people forget that. People forget that I started boxing at 21 and made the Olympic team in a year-and-a-half. I’m really far from my prime, to be honest. I feel like these are the beginning steps.”
If overcoming the bitterness of tumultuous experiences are a sign of maturation, perhaps Wilder is right in insisting that his narrative, like that of the speaker in John Milton’s “Lycidas” (“Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new”), is only beginning. A much-lauded contest with Alexander Povetkin was nixed in May due to the latter testing positive for meldonium, a banned substance. It was a fight regarded as Wilder’s toughest test since Stiverne and, more importantly, his most lucrative one.“You know when we found that out, it shocked all of us,” Wilder recalled. “You know, my trainer didn’t even want me to know at first. Everybody was shocked; everybody was devastated.” Disappointment soon turned into rage, culminating in a lawsuit against Povetkin and his promoter Andrey Ryabinsky. Financial losses aside, what hurt Wilder the most perhaps was the fact that he would not be involved in the kind of fight that had a chance of clawing back some credibility for boxing.
“I was so ready to perform for my country and do what I have to do but what can I do about it now?” Wilder asked rhetorically, the frustration palpable in his voice. “There’s nothing to do about it, no need to cry about it now. You have to move on from that situation. It was definitely a bad situation, sad that it happened, especially that it happened to me, a great guy, a guy who wants to bring this sport to the top.”
Should Wilder get past Arreola tonight with a knockout, most foresee happening in the middle rounds, he’ll be a small step closer to the heavyweight pinnacle. A fighter can only be as great as his opponents and, in Wilder’s case, there is potential at the summit for a bona fide revival of heavyweight competition. There is the young, supremely talented Anthony Joshua, the IBF heavyweight champion of the world. There is loony Tyson Fury, the WBA, WBO and lineal boss. And there’s Wladimir Klitschko, should he remain in the sport. In other words, Mailer’s “big toe” analogy may soon regain some currency.
In the meantime, give the man credit for his legacy-building bluster. He’s doing it for boxing, after all.
“I don’t care about no fame. I don’t care if two people know me. That’s not my goal in this sport. My goal is to build a legacy as the one of the best that fought the best and be the best. So I accept it; I accept all responsibility in the state of boxing. You know, whatever I have to do to make sure this is handled properly, and go from here to straight to the top, I’m up for the challenge.”
Sean Nam is a contributor to The Cruelest Sport and UCNLive. He also writes film critiques for Slant Magazine and Mubi Notebook.
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