Deontay Wilder was willing to risk his heavyweight title and unbeaten record against a hometown hero in Moscow.
What he was not as willing to risk was having his brains scrambled by the fists of a doped-up Russian fighter.
“This is already a put your life on the line type of sport,” Wilder said. “This was like someone coming to a fight with a knife in their hands.”
Wilder was training in England and about to take a plane to Moscow when his camp got word on Sunday that Alexander Povetkin had tested positive to meldonium, the seeming drug du jour of Russian athletes.
One of the better heavyweight matchups of the year was in limbo as Wilder’s camp and the WBC tried to decide what to do.
“I still wanted to fight, but at the end of the day, I had to think about the repercussions behind it,” Wilder said. “We would be sending out a message that says it’s OK to do this.”
If there is one sport where almost everyone would agree doping is not OK, it is boxing. Unlike other sports, you do not play at boxing, and getting hit in the face by a 200-plus pound (90.7kg) fighter is risky enough even if he has not been taking performance-enhancing drugs.
“The head is not meant to be hit in the first place, but we’re willing to do it to make money and provide for our family,” Wilder said. “But we never know if we’re going to come out of the ring like we came into it.”
The WBC ended up pulling the plug on Saturday’s fight, sending Wilder and his team scrambling to book flights back home to Alabama. His US$4.5 million purse is in escrow and likely the subject of a court fight, and he is out tens of thousands of US dollars for training expenses in England.
One minute, he was gearing up for the fight of his life. The next, he was on an airplane, feeling depressed about what happened.
“I’m just devastated,” Wilder said. “It hurts to put so much work into this, hours upon hours of training and sparring and then the traveling. To come up empty-handed is sad and sad for the sport. A lot of people missed out on a great fight.”
Povetkin’s promoter has demanded the fight be rescheduled, and said the level of meldonium in the sample was very low.
“I would respect them more if they just manned up and admitted it,” Wilder said. “It’s downright sad and they should be locked up.”
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