It’s exciting times to be a fan of heavyweight boxing considering the kind of fights that are expected in the near future. Deontay Wilder, the current WBC champion with a 39-0 record (38 KOs) will go up against Luis Ortiz (with a 28-0 record including 24 KOs) on March 3.
Around 4 weeks later, the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, UK would witness a Joshua v Parker encounter. Joshua Parker has a 24-0 record with 18 KOs while Antony Joshua has won all his 20 pro career fights by knockouts. Both of them would put their belts on the line in a winner-takes-it-all match.
The idea is that the winner of the March 31 fight would be involved in another boxing match in mid or late 2018, getting a shot at becoming the first undisputed champion of the modern-day heavyweight boxing, winning all the four recognized boxing titles. Majority of the boxing fans are expecting a showdown between Antony Joshua and Deontay Wilder later this year.
While both the highly feared sluggers have talked about the possibility of facing each other soon, it is Wilder who has been very vocal about their potential bout. Joshua, who has gradually emerged as the biggest star of the boxing world, closed the year 2017 by stating that it is Wilder who needs the fight all the more, for both financial and other reasons.
Fearing that he might need to wait another year to take on Antony Joshua, especially if he and his team manage to lure Tyson Fury out of a more-than-two-year break, Wilder made some pretty bold statements to the media recently.
Regardless of the kind of success Antony Joshua has enjoyed being the box office sensation in Britain as well as in other parts of the world, Wilder insisted that the Brit would never be a true champion and global icon until he gets into the ring with him. It’s worth mentioning here that Anthony Joshua defeated Carlos Takam and Wladimir Klitschko in 2017, with a combined attendance of around 168,000 fans.
Talking to ESPN UK recently, Deontay Wilder stated, “He may have his country behind him and that’s it. Does he want to be remembered as a country-wide champion? Because he’s not worldwide. Over here in America, they don’t even know his name. They just know him as a big guy from England. That’s a fact.”
Wilder’s recent statement comes as a bit of an irony considering that a 32-year-old isn’t very well known in his own country too! That despite the fact that he has successfully defended his WBC title (which he had won from Bermane Stiverne in the year 2015) 6 times.
He said, “I need him and he needs me at the end of the day unless he doesn’t want to unify. Unless he wants to stay over [on] his side of the pond and let people gravitate to him and be a fake sign of what he [says he] is. But he will never be a global icon. You will never be a world-wide figure without me. All roads lead to Deontay Wilder.”
“Everybody wants to see the fight,” Wilder further stated. “The only people that don’t are his promoters. They already know how big of a risk this really is. They should be worried but how long do they really think the public, the fans of boxing are going to allow them to stay away from me? This is the biggest fight of our era.”
After watching 100 YEAR OLD ORTIZ almost take Wilder out, I think Joshua has a easy time with this twig.