By Scott Gilfoid: A lot is riding on this Saturday’s fight between the huge punching heavyweight Deontay Wilder (27-0, 27 KO’s) and Audley Harrison (31-6, 23 KO’s) in their fight in Sheffield, UK. Deontay needs to win for the sake of boxing because he’s on his way to becoming a huge, huge star in the United States similar to the way that Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez have emerged as stars.
Deontay is on the cusp of stardom and he needs to continue with his forward progression with big win over the British speed bump Audley. There’s nothing to be gained for Audley if he wins because he’s 41, and going nowhere.
It’s not as if he’s going to get a title shot if he beats Deontay. That’s a pipe dream on his part because he’ll still have major, major hurdles he’ll have to jump through before he can get a title shot if he were to get lucky and pull off an upset in beating Deontay on Saturday night.
Deontay is on his way to becoming a big star for his promotional company Golden Boy Promotions and I can see him soon being promoted to headlining cards instead of having the indignity of being positioned on undercards and not even having his fights televised in the U.S, like his fight against Harrison this Saturday. That fight won’t even be televised I the U.S.
Instead, American boxing fans only get to see highlights of Wilder-Harrison, while Showtime airs the WBO middleweight champion Peter Quillin facing Fernando Guerrero on the undercard. I think that’s a major mistake by Showtime because they’re showing how tone deaf they are to what American boxing fans want to see.
There’s comparison between Wilder and Quillin in terms of popularity. Wilder is much more popular in the U.S than Quillin, and it’s shocking that Showtime doesn’t understand that. Wilder is a former 2008 Olympic bronze medalist for the U.S, whereas Quillin is just a fighter that recently picked up the WBO 160 lb. title with an unimpressive win over Hassan N’dam N’jikam.
If Deontay can get Audley out of the way in one or two rounds and look sensational in doing so like he has in his previous bouts, then I can see this giving Deontay a major push in popularity. Golden Boy then needs to start putting Deontay in with better opposition so that he can continue improving.
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