By Scott Gilfoid: WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder looks to be preparing for his unification fight against IBF/WBA heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua. This week, Wilder knocked down a piñata with a picture of Joshua’s face attached to it.
After delivering a big right hand to the face of the piñata, Wilder proclaimed proudly, “I knocked his head off.”
It’s still too early to know whether the Joshua vs. Wilder fight will take place in 2018. Wilder had hoped that by saying that he would be willing to accept 40% of the purse for a Joshua fight, it would help get the fight. It doesn’t look like that’s going to be low enough for Wilder to get Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn to let his fighter take the unification match against the Bronze Bomber.
Hearn is talking of wanting to match Joshua against one of his own Matchroom Boxing stable fighters in Jarrell ‘Big Baby’ Miller for the summer if Joshua gets past WBO champion Joseph Parkr on the 31st of March at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales.
Light work for the @BronzeBomber…@anthonyfjoshua don't want it. pic.twitter.com/ds81kPenCv
— UNINTERRUPTED (@uninterrupted) March 16, 2018
That right hand that Wilder landed to the dummy’s face looked devastating. Wilder not surprisingly lost his balance while throwing the shot, because there was someone to his left that was too close. Like a lot of big guys, the 6’7” Wilder needs a lot of room when he throws his punches. The impact of that right hand shot that he landed on the piñata would have been devastating if it had landed to the head of Joshua or any fighter in the heavyweight division.
Wilder has true one-punch power. He’s clearly the hardest puncher the heavyweight division has seen in many years in my view. Mike Tyson might be the only one that had similar punching power to Wilder, but I’m not even certain that he had the kind of power that the Bronze Bomber possesses.
Deontay Wilder is special when it comes to his right hand punching power. We saw that in his last fight against Luis Ortiz on March 3. Wilder only fought in spurts during the fight. We saw Wilder land a big right hand to drop Ortiz in the 5th round. Wilder then took it easy until the 9th, when he again landed a big right hand that had Ortiz out on his feet as the round ended. During the 10th, Wilder finished off Ortiz in knocking him down twice to get a knockout.
The boxing public wants to know when the Joshua vs. Wilder fight will happen. The fans are going to have to ask Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn that question, because he’s the one in charge of making the Joshua-Wilder fight. Hearn doesn’t appear to be in any real hurry to make the fight happen unfortunately.