𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

It is a cold London afternoon in February and Deontay Wilder has just been to Borough Market — one of the city’s most famous outdoor food spots — to share fish and chips with Derek Chisora.

It is a curious scene, given Wilder is not renowned for sharing pleasantries with opponents, but maybe it speaks to his state of mind as he approaches his bout with Chisora at the O2 Arena, the 50th fight of his professional heavyweight career.

Wilder has lost none of his ambition and wants the Chisora fight to mark the start of another charge to the top of the heavyweight division where he was once a WBC world champion.

Many are surprised that he still wants to keep pushing. He is 40 now, with four defeats in his last six outings, but has no need to work again given his lucrative career. Why not just put his feet up back home in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where a statue stands in his honour?

“I only got into this business because I sacrificed my life and my body for my child,” says Wilder, who quit college as a teenager to work two jobs when his eldest daughter Naieya was born with Tony Yoka, a condition which stops the spine from developing.

“If I didn’t have a child that was born with spina bifida and needed me, you would never see me. I risked my life for my child. And with that being said, I’ve gained a lot of success from it. Now I’m at a point in time in my life where I’m being selfish. I want to do it for me.

“Everything’s all about me and that’s the reason I’m still in it. I still have goals: what I want to do before I leave this good old business of boxing.”

That business has been good to Wilder. When at college, he was a promising at basketball and American football player, but turned to boxing when his daughter’s mounting medical bills were not being covered by his two jobs, one of which was driving a beer truck. A late starter, he won a bronze medal at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing before turning professional.

An explosive right hand led to 40 wins — 39 of which were stoppages — before he ran into Tyson Fury and a controversial draw in their first meeting.

He lost two of their three fights — still a sore point for Wilder, who maintains Fury cheated (a claim the Briton has always denied) — before beating Robert Helenius after the trilogy. He then lost back-to-back bouts with Joseph Parker and Zhilei Zhang in 2023 and 2024 resperctively when there was Saudi Arabian money on the line for a long-awaited showdown with Anthony Joshua. It appeared over, but still he fights on.

Deontay Wilder is felled by Tyson Fury in their 2021 fight in Las Vegas (Al Bello/Getty Images)

Time is now Wilder’s greatest opponent, one that brings just as much danger as the 42-year-old Chisora, also fighting for the 50th time this weekend. Boxing is littered with stories of fighters who went on too long and were left damaged beyond repair in retirement.

“I don’t consider it a sport,” Wilder tells The Athletic. “They call it a sport. It’s a masquerade. The only people that call it a sport are those that don’t understand what goes behind closed doors. Do you understand me? Because if you knew what was behind closed doors, you’d fall out of love with it.

“Don’t get me wrong. We love this business that we’re in because it’s able to change our lives and other lives around us, but it’s not for the weak.

“We are the one per cent of the population that is willing and ready and able to do this. Most of the time, when fighters get in this business, it’s to take care of their families. You rarely find a guy to get in where they’re like: ‘I’m doing it for myself’. Most of the time, it’s for the family or getting out of poverty. Some fighters don’t really have an education.

“I think that’s where they get taken advantage of all the time. And then when they get hurt, that’s what you get a pat on the back because you was a hell of a fighter. Then you got 100 more men waiting in line to take your position, and then you’re gone.

“Why is it that we have so many fighters that have risked their lives? They done been damn good fighters, but now they can barely wipe their a–. They can barely talk.

“They can barely even go out and eat. They had to ask for money and stuff like that, while the people that promoted them or put them up, they still riding around in Rolls Royces, mansions, and riding in private jets. How backwards is that?

“I’ve risked my life for my money to do something. What have you done? Negotiated a deal, and that’s it.”

Wilder faces Britain’s Derek Chisora (left) in London on Saturday (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)

The conversation has veered off course a little, much like Wilder’s career has in recent years.

The Alabaman had issues outside of the ring, too. Last June, just days before claiming his 44th victory against little-known Tyrrell Herndon, USA Today reported that a court had ruled against his bid for joint custody of his youngest daughter Kaorii.

It came after the child’s mother and the Alabama native’s ex-partner, Shuntel ‘Telli’ Swift, was widely reported to have been granted a temporary restraining order against him in June 2024 alleging physical and mental abuse. The order expired later that month.

When approached by The Athletic, Wilder’s team did not comment on the matter. On the day of the interview, Wilder said he did not want to discuss personal matters.

There was a time when Wilder facing Chisora, a grizzled veteran of the British fight game, would have prompted safety fears for the Londoner, given how he has been picked off by opponents in recent years.

Yet the sense of jeopardy is not quite so acute now, given the doubts over whether Wilder can still put away opponents in the chilling style which made him a must-watch attraction for many years. His win over Herndon took seven rounds and, in defeat to Parker and Zhang, he struggled to land with the same ferocity as before. Some have wondered how much those three thrilling bouts with Fury took out of him.

Fighters generally don’t lose power as they age but their timing does slip, and Wilder’s ability to detonate his right hand was all down to finding that perfect moment of physics from his 6ft 6in frame and 83in reach.

“I’m not looking for the old Deontay,” he says. “I am the new Wilder. There’s a lot of attributes that come with him that people have seen such as power and stuff, but there is more.”

Wilder has always been a complex character. Sometimes he can be reflective, as he was in February; occasionally he can be jovial, as when shouting his catchphrase “Bomb Squad” to announce his arrival; he has often been angry. On the day he met The Athletic, he was involved in a heated exchange with Simon Jordan, the former businessman and football club owner turned outspoken radio pundit.

Yet he is a significant figure. He reigned as WBC champion for five years and made 10 defences of the title, and remains America’s last heavyweight title-holder, but he never got his opportunity to face Joshua for what would have been an undisputed showdown before the end of the last decade.

Wilder is the last U.S. heavyweight to have a world title, the WBC belt (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Wilder is still a draw and, when there was talk of a shot at WBA, WBC and IBF heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk earlier this year, some pitched him as a contender. It would have given the Ukrainian an entertaining dance partner for a big fight in the U.S., even if the American is not the force he once was.

Those talks stalled and Wilder’s team opted to move for Chisora as it would give him a chance to find form before potentially stepping up to world-title level again.

Saturday’s fight could still be entertaining, given the status of both men’s careers, but it is far from an elite match-up given their recent records.

Chisora, now something of a cult hero for boxing fans in the UK, claims this will be his last time in the ring but we have heard that before. He’s a warhorse of the sport, even if he never had the class to win a world title, but even a 14th loss wouldn’t necessarily mean he won’t keep on going.

For Wilder, defeat would end any talk of returning to title contention, but if he can roll back the years and find that right hand again, then you might see those Usyk discussions rekindled.

“I’m not a quitter,” he insists. “It’s hard for me to quit because if you do, you’ll never know what you could have done.”