{"id":672073,"date":"2026-01-03T22:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T22:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/672073\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T22:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T22:44:10","slug":"deontay-wilder-doesnt-believe-hes-lost-a-step-im-in-my-prime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/672073\/","title":{"rendered":"Deontay Wilder Doesn\u2019t Believe He’s Lost A Step: ‘I\u2019m In My Prime’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Deontay Wilder <\/a>hasn\u2019t looked as explosive and violent as he once did.<\/p>\n

At 40, he looks past his best, but he doesn\u2019t believe that\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m in my prime now,\u201d Wilder to Naji on Cigar Talk.<\/p>\n

Wilder still sports that menacing look. Yet, that mind-numbing power he once had hasn\u2019t shown up when he needed it most recently.<\/p>\n

In four of his last six, the former WBC heavyweight champion has come up woefully short. His last few appearances have been particularly dreadful.<\/p>\n

Joseph Parker won nearly every round against Wilder in December 2023. Roughly six months later, Zhilei Zhang <\/a>took his pound of flesh, stopping Wilder in the fifth round.<\/p>\n

Eventually, the Alabama native got back on track against Tyrrell Herndon. But even with Wilder being viewed as a gigantic favorite, he didn\u2019t exactly blow him out of the water.<\/p>\n

Wilder scored two knockdowns <\/a>before knocking out Herndon in the seventh on June 27.
Now Wilder is in the middle of negotiating a matchup <\/a>with Ring, IBF, WBA and WBC heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk.<\/p>\n

The Ukrainian has seemed adamant about facing Wilder, who was last champion in 2021, in the first half of 2026.<\/p>\n

Wilder (44-4-1, 43 KOs) figures to be a massive underdog, but he believes his late start in the sport has helped preserve him despite his advanced age. <\/p>\n

\u201cI started boxing very late,\u201d he said. \u201cI started at 21.”<\/p>\n

Three of his four losses have come by stoppage, the most recent in 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Deontay Wilder hasn\u2019t looked as explosive and violent as he once did. At 40, he looks past his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,10188,10181,10187,10186,10179,4496,10182,10183,10184,10185,10180,10193,10192,10175,10173,10174,10190,10176,10172,10194,10189,79,10191,10171,10178,16,15,10177],"class_list":{"0":"post-672073","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-boxing-community","10":"tag-boxing-fights","11":"tag-boxing-history","12":"tag-boxing-interviews","13":"tag-boxing-magazine","14":"tag-boxing-news","15":"tag-boxing-photos","16":"tag-boxing-rankings","17":"tag-boxing-results","18":"tag-boxing-schedule","19":"tag-boxing-videos","20":"tag-disqualification","21":"tag-draw","22":"tag-fight","23":"tag-fighter","24":"tag-fighter-news","25":"tag-knockout","26":"tag-latest-boxing-matches","27":"tag-ring","28":"tag-ring-magazine","29":"tag-split-decision","30":"tag-sports","31":"tag-technical-knockout","32":"tag-the-ring","33":"tag-top-fighters","34":"tag-uk","35":"tag-united-kingdom","36":"tag-upcoming-boxing-matches"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}