By Scott Gilfoid: WBC heavyweight champion Deontay “Bronze Bomber” Wilder says he was never knocked out by Wladimir Klitschko in the past when he was assisting him with sparring to get him ready for one of his fights. Sky Sports commentator Johnny Nelson said that Wilder had been knocked out in the past by Wladimir, and also dropped with a body shot. It’s unclear really where Nelson got this information. He obviously wasn’t in training camp with Wilder and Wladimir to see the sparring first hand.
Whatever the case, it’s ridiculous stuff. Even if it were true about Wilder being dropped, then so what? Sparring is sparring. We just heard recently how Anthony Joshua was dropped in sparring by Joe Joyce and Daniel Dubois. The last I heard, those two guys are PROSPECTS, not former world champions like Wladimir.
“The worst kept secret going” – is true and Wilder was not only “knocked out cold twice,” said Nelson.
Being knocked down by a talented heavyweight like Wladimir should be a badge of honor rather than something to be ashamed of. II kind of remember seeing Wladimir drop Joshua last April. Joshua wasn’t dropped, he was BADLY hurt, and gassed out for a solid 4 rounds before he finally got his second wind. You can imagine what would have happened had Wladimir had the ring smarts to finish Joshua off? It would have been curtains for big Joshua. We’re talking curtains. Joshua was hurt and he had punched himself out from throwing a lot of punches in the 5th and 6th round.
Normally when a fighter gasses out, they get their second wind a round later. That was not the case with Joshua. It took him 5 solid rounds before he got his second wind back. And the only reason Joshua won the fight was because Wladimir made a dumb mistake by standing too close to Joshua in the 11th. Like Lennox Lewis, Joshua’s best weapon on his arsenal is his uppercut. When you take that away from him, he looks slow, because he’s carrying around too much useless body building muscle. Joshua can’t even throw his power shots with any speed from the outside. It wasn’t an accident that Wilder was making Joshua miss all night.
“Johnny Nelson, oh, he said that me and Klitschko sparred on various occasions, and in fact that Klitschko knocked me out cold and dropped me with a body shot,” Wilder said to LDBC Sports. “Keep in mind that Klitschko hasn’t thrown a body shot in eleven damn years! All of a sudden it had to be me. Why me? I had to be dropped in sparring. I was only in the Klitschko camp one time and I held my own with everybody. All of a sudden this mysterious untold story of me and Klitschko [appears] and he knocked me out, come on, man. Please, people with bitch tendencies. I’m the wrong man to spread rumours about and lies.”
Wilder said he was Klitschko’s top sparring partner in camp, and that he had “held his own” when he was in there sparring with him.
It’s sad when different people bring up sparring when trying to pick apart a certain fighter. We’ve heard rumors about how Gennady “GGG” Golovkin supposedly stunned Saul Canelo Alvarez twice during their sparring sessions back in 2010. The people talk about sparring as if it had any real meaning. Most of the time, the sparring partner is just helping out by helping the A-side fighter by fighting with a different style than their own.
So for instance if Wilder was helping Wladimir get ready for Mariusz Wach, he would likely have been fighting in a slow, robotic manner on the outside, fighting in a stiff way that was entirely different from how he normally fights. Canelo was likely helping Golovkin work on certain parts of his game to ready him for his next fight. I highly doubt that Canelo was in there trying to take Golovkin’s head off. I think a lot of boxing fans don’t quite realize what the purpose of sparring is. It’s to help a fighter work on different parts of their game.
The sparring partners get stuck in fighting with a different strategy than what they would normally use if they were fighting a certain guy. You’re not going to get too many sparring partners looking to go all out in sparring to try take out the guy that he’s been brought into camp to help. The reason why is simple. The sparring partner has brought into camp to help the other guy, not to try and make a statement against him.
When a sparring partner starts trying to hurt the guy he’s supposed to be helping, they often are replaced and rightly so. As such, I don’t think Wilder was sparring with Wladimir like it was a real fight. If anything, Wilder was likely fighting at half speed, using a different style from his own, and of course, he was likely wearing head gear and such. Sparring is totally different from an actual fight. It’s like doing simple volleying in tennis. You’re no trying to score points.
Wilder wants to fight IBF/WBA heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua as soon as possible. Unfortunately, there’s a line of fighters in front of him starting with Wladimir. If Joshua can beat Wladimir a second time, which is totally uncertain, then he’ll be looking at a title defense against Kubrat Pulev after that. Wilder will probably need to wait until the second half of 2018 or possibly 2019 before he finally gets a fight with Joshua. That’s still a big IF, because Joshua might lose to Wladimir in the rematch. Wladimir already showed that he’s the better fighter of the two in their fight on April 29. Wladimir lost the fight based off his bad tactics rather than him not being good enough. If Wladimir had made 2 simple adjustments to his game in that fight, he would have beaten Joshua for sure.
“Boxing may have originated in the UK, but those belts are going back to the USA, trust me,” Wilder said.
Wilder still hasn’t named his next opponent, but it’s possible that he could be facing Bermane Stiverne again in a rematch. That’ll be a fun fight. Wilder beat Stiverne by a 12 round unanimous decision 2 years ago in 2015 in winning the World Boxing Council heavyweight title off of him.