Win or lose against Luis Ortiz, this is Deontay Wilder's chance to prove he can fight ahead of Anthony Joshua bout
A Wilder stoppage win will send a serious message to Anthony Joshua - and so will a sensible performance. But given Ortiz's pedigree, there's every chance something special could unfold
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Your support makes all the difference.In many ways Deontay Wilder is a heavyweight freak, constructed like a big man across the chest, a skinny runt across the ankles and with power that still seems to shock his opponents.
There was once, not many Siberian winters ago, a fighter called the Beast from the East, standing at over seven feet, weighing just under 22-stone and holding a heavyweight title belt. His name was Nikolai Valuev and he was little more than a physical freak; Wilder, though, has something else, but nobody is quite sure exactly what it is.
On Saturday night Wilder defends his WBC heavyweight title for the seventh time when he fights the Cuban ogre Luis Ortiz, a troubled and dangerous reject of 38, at the Barclays Centre in Brooklyn, New York. It is Wilder’s most difficult championship fight yet of an underwhelming reign which appears to exist in some type of parallel heavyweight universe; Wilder has beaten six different men in seven heavyweight fights and I would argue that he has so far easily avoided the six best active heavyweights during his time as champion.
It is not uncommon to miss the best in modern boxing - several British world champions have done the same thing - but it is annoying at heavyweight where there is added focus on transparency, one of boxing’s rarest commodities. Wilder and his loquacious people also claim he has met the best, which is fast becoming the most annoying deceit in boxing.
Wilder is a towering, gangling twist of muscle and bone, his punches land from all angles, he falls over his shots, he neglects his jab, he has only been hit a couple of times in 39 fights and so far during his long unbeaten sequence he has heard the final bell just once. “Well, somebody must be hitting these guys,” he told me a few years ago when I asked about his untidy finishes. Two days later he cuffed, pushed, clipped and hit Audley Harrison when he was down for yet another first round win; I guess the 70-second stoppage proved two points.
Ortiz is a totally different type of fighter, a veteran of over 350 amateur contests and the victim of being at weights in his homeland alongside some great fighters back in Havana. Ortiz never won a major international title, he was never a happy member of the fading Cuban system and he finally made his professional debut a few days before turning 31. He has dropped some weight, pledged to live right and so far during two months of preparation he has not broken a single promise; Ortiz is unbeaten in 28 fights, with 24 being bludgeoned early but he also has doping violations against him. Nobody wants to love Ortiz, nobody wants to see him win and a good against evil mix is never a bad thing in the boxing ring.
The greatest Cuban heavyweights have always refused the lure and lies of the professional game with Teofilo Stevenson and Felix Savon both remaining loyal to their idol, Fidel Castro. Both Savon and Stevenson, with their glittering haul of six Olympic gold medals, stood at Castro’s side when tiny Cuban wizards ducked under and over walls to flee to the West and the endless promises of riches. Heavyweights Odlanier Solis, Mike Perez and Ortiz all followed the baddest, rudest and craziest Cuban boxer of all, Jorge Louis Gonzalez, across a taboo boundary to the professional game.
Gonzalez was a brilliant amateur, a real threat but he grew fat in head and body as he bathed his many desires as a guest of the MGM in Las Vegas in the early Nineties. He should have been world champion, it’s that simple, but the good-life curse, an affliction that blights all young Cuban boxers when freedom alters their life, was excessive with that man. Gonzalez lost a world title fight to Riddick Bowe in 1995; Gonzalez had beaten both Bowe and Lennox Lewis as amateurs. Gonzalez even beat Stevenson, and his defection, one afternoon in Helsinki in 1991, rocked the Cuban way. Sadly, Ortiz is part of a tradition of talented Cuban heavies falling way short in important fights. “I change history,” Ortiz has promised.
A Wilder stoppage win will send a serious message to Anthony Joshua and so will a sensible performance, a cautious few rounds to slow the ageing Ortiz down. Ortiz can win with a blunt assault, all risk, no finesse and hope that somewhere in the whirlwind and tangle of arms he connects with Wilder’s exposed jaw. However, Ortiz has the reach and the pedigree to box, the ancient schooling to think beyond belting punches and if that happens then something special could unfold; win or lose we find out if Wilder can fight. We know Ortiz can, we have just never been sure if he wants to.
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