Former heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder has his confidence back ... with 'hate in my heart'
Deontay Wilder is planning for 2025 to be the first calendar year since 2019 when he will fight on more than one occasion.
It was announced March 28 that Wilder would return to the ring June 27 in a 10-round bout against Tyrrell Herndon at the Charles Koch Arena in Wichita, Kansas. Now Wilder has revealed to Uncrowned and DAZN's "Ariel x Ade" show that he has a second bout lined up as well.
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"We've got two [fights] scheduled right now, for sure," Wilder revealed Tuesday. "We're looking to do another [fight] in December. I think this year is going to be filled with just making sure I'm back tuned up. I'm tuning myself up, making sure I'm where I say I am."
Wilder has boxed outside of North America just three times. In 2013, he ventured to Sheffield, England, to knock out the 2000 Olympic gold medalist Audley Harrison in the opening round. His last two fights ended in defeat in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, against Joseph Parker and Zhilei Zhang.
The former WBC heavyweight champion hopes to change that international losing streak in December in a unique location for a boxing event.
"We're going to be out of the country," Wilder said about his December fight. "Somewhere in Korea, South Korea."
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Tyson Fury's retirement from the sport following back-to-back defeats to Oleksandr Usyk has left a void in the heavyweight division. A fight between Fury and Anthony Joshua had been building up for almost a decade, but now it appears that we may never see that fight.
Deontay Wilder is looking to be active in 2025. ()
(Richard Pelham via Getty Images)
Another clash boxing fans had hoped to see for many years was Wilder vs. Joshua, and with Fury supposedly bowing out of the sport, the matchup makes even more sense now. But Wilder has insisted that his comeback is not centered around any specific opponent.
"I'm like any other boxing fan, I just want the best fights possible," Wilder insisted.
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"I'm not looking for any particular [fight], but I want the best of the best. Whoever's the best in the division, that's who I want.
"The mission is still — I've still got to unify the division. That's one of the main things that I came in [with] and a goal that I set forth. I never had a true opportunity to get that accomplished due to other circumstances of different obligations of other people, but I never had that opportunity. And we're still here, I'm still young, I'm healthy."
Wilder will hope to shake off the cobwebs against Herndon, who will be the least accomplished foe he has faced in more than a decade.
"We had options of coming back and fighting in big opportunities," Wilder explained. "But we didn't want to take that route, we wanted to make sure that I say I'm good and everything is good, no doubts. Because many times I have said that I was good, but maybe [I] had a little doubt."
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Although Wilder will end a year-long layoff when he faces Herndon, the "Bronze Bomber" insists he never contemplated retirement after his recent stumbles, and his lengthy period of inactivity was due to factors out of his control.
"We've been doing many different things [since the Zhang fight]," Wilder revealed. "But just staying in shape most of all because we knew we were going to return. We just didn't have a certain type of date to return because of all the injuries that I had and the outside — all the different things outside that was going on. We wanted to make sure that I was just fully healthy — physically, mentally, and emotionally. I had to take a wellness check. I had to sit back and get a lot of things together in my life.
"Especially with the shoulder injuries. Anyone that knows about shoulder injuries knows that's one of the longest injuries that you can go through. I [ended] up injuring my shoulder at one point in time, and it healed, and then I ended up having an accident and falling on it on the same shoulder, and then I had to start the process all over again.
"All I had was pain [for] 24 hours. Every time I threw my right hand, it would be nothing but pain. I had to really deal with it. I have a high tolerance [for] pain. So I had to deal with a lot of different things. But [to] make a long story short, I'm fully healed with everything. I don't have [any more] pain at this point in time. And all my burdens have been cut loose from me, I'm free."
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Wilder had an epiphany after his brutal loss to Zhang in June 2024, when he realized how his lingering issue was preventing him from performing at his best. Now he hopes to showcase a better version of himself.
"There were never [any] retirement questions in my mind whatsoever because I couldn't understand what was going on with me at that moment in time," Wilder said. "I couldn't pinpoint why certain things were happening or why certain events were occurring. After the Zhang fight, I finally caught it. I finally realized what was going on with me, and I immediately took action at that."
In the build-up to his November 2019 rematch with Luis Ortiz, Wilder famously told Ortiz, "I only have to be perfect for two seconds [to win the fight]," in what turned out to be a prophecy. Wilder lost six straight rounds to Ortiz before knocking him out with a single right hand in the seventh.
Wilder had supreme confidence in his ability to finish a fight in an instant at the time, but the former heavyweight champion claimed to have lost his self-belief after feeling a sense of betrayal from people close to him.
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"I never [thought that I would have] a point of time in my life where I [would lose] my confidence in myself," an emotional Wilder said.
"Things got so crazy in my life, you know, that it altered my mindset and I lost confidence in myself. I never thought I would be a man to be able to do that, but certain things in your life and you have certain people around that you never think would break your heart and when they do, it changes you.
"I never had hate in my heart, but now I do."
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