Deontay Wilder: I probably got more fans in England than Audley has

By Boxing News - 04/08/2013 - Comments

wilder52By Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten heavyweight contender Deontay Wilder (27-0, 27 KO’s) is excited about getting back in the ring to fight in front of what should be a large British audience this month in his fight against Audley Harrison (31-6, 23 KO’s) on April 27th at the Motorpoint Arena in Sheffield, UK.

Wilder, 27, expects to be warmly greeted by the British fans and sees himself as having more fans in the Arena than the 41-year-old Audley will. I don’t know about that, but I’m sure Deontay will do a good job winning over the fans by putting in an impressive performance against the 6’6” Audley.

Deontay said to RingTV: “I know that I’ve got a lot of fans in England, probably more fans that Audley Harrison has. I’m excited to go and perform in front of England and to show them what I’m all about. I don’t have any worries at all.”

You know things are bad for a fighter when a visiting fighter is able to come to your own country and get more applause than you. It’ll look bad if Deontay is the one that’s well received and Audley booed, but what do you expect.

Audley has had a disappointing career after turning pro in 2001 following his Gold medal win in the 2000 Olympics. Audley brought his career along too slowly for a 29-year-old fighter with a gold medal.

At his age, Audley’s career should have been moved much faster because he was capable of fighting better opposition than the guys he was matched up against in the first four years of his career. That kind of turned off a lot of Audley’s fans right from the start because many of them got the impression that Audley was just fighting easy guys to inflate his record and wasn’t serious about wanting to capture a world title.

Audley’s career took a further hit when he was beaten in back to back fights by Danny Williams and Dominick Guinn in 2005-2006. Things never really recovered for Audley after that with losing to Michael Sprott, Martin Rogan, David Haye and David Price.

Audley has won some fights before and since then, but his opposition has been God awful. He hasn’t ever beaten anyone that you could call remotely good.

The Wilder fight is Audley’s big chance to prove himself to a lot of doubters and put himself in position to get a title shot, not that any of the world champions would bother to fight him. Audley has a chance here to turn things around at 41 if he can pull off an upset of the 6’7” Wilder.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t look like something that has any real possibility of happening because Deontay is too power, too talented and too young for the fragile-chinned Audley.

Deontay is a nightmare opponent for someone like Audley because he hits too hard and as soon as he lands his first powerful right hand, we’ll likely see Audley staggering around the ring ready to drop if he doesn’t hit the canvas from that one shot.



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