Not long to go now until one of the most potentially explosive heavyweight fights of the year. Deontay Wilder and Zhilei Zhang will collide in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on June 1, and fans are braced for a real bombs away type of fight. Wilder, 43-3-1(42) certainly needs to let the bombs fly if he’s to defeat “Big Bang.” The version of Wilder who showed up to fight common opponent Joseph Parker in December would be in real trouble against Zhang, so passive and lacking in power as Wilder looked in that fight, with him going down on points.
But sparring partner Agron Smakici (the guy who inflicted the cut above Tyson Fury’s eye, this causing another delay to the Fury-Oleksandr Usyk fight that finally took place this past Saturday), says the old Wilder is back and that he is “hurting people” in camp as he gets ready to do the same to Zhang, 26-2-1(21).
“People are going down, I can tell you that,” Smakici told Talk Sport when describing the Wilder sparring sessions he has both experienced and witnessed. “He is aggressive, he is punching hard, that killer is definitely there. When he punches you, it’s a different type of power. It is like a flash. I have done sparring with all of the best heavyweights but this is a different kind of danger. You have to be really careful in sparring, his right hand is so dangerous. I got caught with two right hands. Thank goodness, my hand was up, but I’m telling you, you can see nothing but black for a few seconds. I came back but it’s crazy power, like nothing I have ever experienced before.”
Wilder, when he’s on point and right, both mentally as well as physically, has shown he has uncommon punching power, lethal punching power. In the Parker fight, it looked for all the world as though that version of Wilder was gone for ever, that the former WBC heavyweight champ was all out of bullets. But now, unless Smakici is exaggerating here – and there really is no reason to believe he is – it seems “The Bronze Bomber” is back.
This could mean bad news for Zhang, but good news for Wilder and his fans. Someone is going down on the night of June 1, and from what Smakici says, it could well be Zhang. Of course, the man with “Chinese Power” may well have sparring partners of his own saying pretty much the same thing about him that Smakici is saying about Wilder.
No doubt, both Wilder and Zhang hit with real power. To repeat, it promises to be bombs away on June 1.