[jwplayer ZscyyWtu]
Deontay Wilder discovered about two years into his professional career that he had something truly special — his power.
Of his first 12 opponents — all knockout victims — only two made it out of the first round. Indeed, the right hand was beginning to wreak havoc in a division starved for a knockout artist.
Wilder wasn’t surprised, though. He had been hurting people since he was in elementary school.
“I’ve always been strong,” Wilder told Boxing Junkie before a press conference to promote his rematch with Tyson Fury on Feb. 22 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on pay-per-view. “I’ve always been able to handle (myself), whether it’s street fighting or boxing.
“… I always was that guy known to (hold) his own. Deontay Wilder didn’t play around.”
Yes, Wilder engaged in many street fights growing up in a tough neighborhood in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. And they weren’t always his idea. When you have a reputation as fighter, he said, other tough kids want to test you. Not many passed the test.
“They’ll hear stories of you,” he said, “so they’ll … want to try you.”
The first person who understood that Wilder (42-0-1, 41 KOs) was blessed with something truly unusual might’ve someone a lot closer to him than the other kids on the street — his grandmother.
“My grandmother said years ago that I was anointed by God,” he said. “She used to pick me up from school and say, ‘Maybe God is trying to use you and he can’t use you if you’re getting into trouble.
“But I never understood it, even when she said it. I never understood my greatness, I guess, because I didn’t find my purpose in life. And now that I have … this power, I know exactly how to use it.
“People get so sucked into my power. That’s all they see, they don’t see skills, they don’t see nothing else. They just want to see what they came to see, what they paid their money for, which I don’t blame them. They came to see a knockout. And I do that very well.”
The kids on the block could’ve told you that.
“A lot of people I grew up with (say), ‘You finally put that fighting to use,'” Wilder said.
That’s an understatement.