He has, at least for now, lost that confidence. I’ve spent only maybe an hour with Wilder in my life, but in that limited time, I found him to be a charming, swaggering personality who carries a type of confidence that comes with knocking 40 people unconscious publicly. Sports has a way of asking the same question over and over again: Are you the person you think you are? In the 19 months since their rematch, Wilder has probably not liked the answer. Fourteen months later, in February 2020, Fury built on that game plan and stopped Wilder in the seventh round in an absolute blowout to win the WBC heavyweight championship. That you could go right at the most dangerous puncher in the sport and thrive. That sequence suggested, as Fury would say later, that the bully could be bullied. Fury, who was on defense for most of that fight, swarmed Wilder with punches in a flurry to end the fight, which ended in a draw. The next part was less miraculous, more subtle, but just as important. Fury got up and changed the course of both men’s careers. ![]() Wilder is the hardest puncher in the sport. The first is famous: Two quick, hard Wilder hooks landed squarely on Fury’s head, leading to a knockdown that everyone in the building-including myself-considered to be the end of the fight. The final round of the first fight between Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury featured two events that changed the course of modern boxing.
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