Deontay Wilder comes in at 212.5 lbs at weigh-in

Boxingnews24.com

By Jim Dower: In a controversial move, Deontay Wilder weighed in at just 212.5 pounds on Friday for his weigh-in against Tyson Fury. This is the second lowest weight of Wilder’s decade long pro career behind his debut weight of 207 lbs against Ethan Cox in 2008. Wilder looked painfully thin for a heavyweight at the weigh-in. Fury (27-0, 19 KOs) weighed in at 256 lbs, and he’ll be enjoying a 44 lb weight advantage. Fury might get a chance to use his size against Wilder if he can get in close on Saturday night and mug him in their fight on Showtime PPV at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California.

With the huge weight difference between the two fighters, it’s going to be a cruiserweight vs. a super heavyweight. The negative that you can say about Fury is he looked fat still despite having lost a massive amount of weight since starting his comeback. Fury still has a lot of stubborn fat on his frame that needs to come off.

For all intents and purposes, Fury will be fighting a cruiserweight on Saturday night when he faces the 212 lb Wilder. There’s no question that Wilder could make cruiserweight with the 212 lbs he weighed on Friday. It would have been easy for Wilder to have dehydrated 12 lbs to make the 200 lb cruiserweight limit, and then rehydrate to 212 lbs over night. If Wilder’s goes south in the near future, he can definitely make cruiserweight to try and reinvent himself in that weight class. Wilder’s power will go a lot father at cruiserweight than at heavyweight.

Fury mugged Wladimir Klitschko on the inside in their fight in November 2015, and the Ukrainian weighing 245¾, which was only two lbs lighter than the 247 lbs that Fury weighed for that fight.

It was WBC heavyweight champion Deontay’s fifth consecutive fight in which his weight has been dropping. Wilder started losing weight beginning in his contest against Chris Arreola in July 2016 when he weighed in at 226¼ lbs. That was down two lbs from the 228 lbs that Wilder weighed in his previous fight against Artur Szpilka in January 2016.

Here’s Wilder’s dropping weight for the last five fights:

– 226¼ (Chris Arreola)

– 222 (Gerald Washington)

– 220¾ (Bermane Stiverne

– 214¾ (Luis Ortiz)

– 212 (Tyson Fury)

It’s assumed that Wilder has had medical checkups to make sure there’s no underlying wasting illness that would cause his weight to be steadily dropping for the last two years. But if this patterm of weght loss continues on it’s present course, it’s safe to assume that Wilder’s weight for his next fight will be between 2 to 6 lbs lighter than his fight against Fury. Under a worst case scenario, Wilder could be as lose as 206 lbs for his next title defense. If it’s a unification fight against the 245 lb Joshua, it’s hard to imagine Wilder winning. He’s already the size of a rehydrated cruiserweight. If Wilder’s weight continues to drop, he’ll fall into the realm of a light heavyweight. someone needs to help Wilder work on his diet, and get him on some weight building exercises so that he can pump up to at least the 230s.

If Wilder continues to lose weight at the same pace, he’s going to be in trouble when he gets inside the ring with Matchroom Boxing USA promoter Eddie Hearn’s big heavyweights in Joshua and Jarrell ‘Big Baby Miller. The boxing fans are saying that Wilder will lose to Fury and Joshua due to how low his weight is right now. Wilder obviously shouldn’t have let his weight get this low. He was criticized recently for how low his weight has gotten for his last fight against Luis Ortiz, and how hes even fighter than that. Something isn’t going right with Wilder’s training camp for him to be continuing to lose weight.