NAAZIM RICHARDSON EXPLAINS WHY DEONTAY WILDER MAY BE “THE BEST PUNCHING HEAVYWEIGHT EVER”

“You see, every other puncher you had, Foreman, Tyson and Joe Louis, all of their mechanics were better than Deontay’s. Deontay is punching from the pure grit and he’s annihilating these dudes… He’s laying dudes off, man. Like I said, the Stiverne fight, you gotta look at it from a standpoint of Deontay put a man to sleep who never took his hands down,” stated world-class trainer Naazim Richardson, who explained why he believes undefeated heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder may be “the best punching heavyweight ever”. Check it out!

PC: I wanted to get your take on a few topics real quick. Deontay Wilder and Anthony Joshua seem to be very close to making this fight a reality. We have spoke before about a potential matchup between the two, but now that it seems very likely, what is your take?

NR: Everybody in the gym knows Wilder is a good friend of mine, and they say, “Ya boy getting ready to fight Joshua, man. Naazim, I’m telling you Joshua is better than Wilder.” Yes, and so is everybody else he’s faced (laughing). The kid didn’t start boxing until very late. Stiverne’s skills and mechanics are above Deontay’s. These guys have all of these years in boxing. When you look at mechanics and everything, they are better because half of them been boxing since they were kids. So, yeah, their jab, right hand, left hook is on balance a little better than Deontay’s. But guess what, you fight better than a .357 bullet, but how do you match up when that .357 bullet came out of that barrel? A guy got on me and said, “You said that Deontay might be the best punching heavyweight ever!” I said, “Maybe!” You see, every other puncher you had, Foreman, Tyson and Joe Louis, all of their mechanics were better than Deontay’s. Deontay is punching from the pure grit and he’s annihilating these dudes.

PC: So you’re saying even though he may not be punching with the correct form, he’s getting the same result of those guys who were punching with the correct form.

NR: He get it and sometimes better. He’s laying dudes off, man. Like I said, the Stiverne fight, you gotta look at it from a standpoint of Deontay put a man to sleep who never took his hands down. He punched through this man’s hands and knocked him out cold; sleep. If Stiverne could have gotten out of that round, what could you have told him? Put your hands up?

PC: Many people like to pinpoint Deontay’s “wild” finishes. As a trainer, do you not touch that because it’s working or do you try to settle him down and calm down his finishing attacks?

NR: I think Mark Breland is doing the best job that he can do. I think Mark Breland is doing a great job. Mark Breland has a task in front of him that is hard to deal with and the task is this. He has a student that if he tries to tell him to get his footing right and turn his hip with the hook and right hand, and his student gets frustrated with the teacher’s information, he goes out there and knocks the guy out anyway. So it’s hard to teach a guy that even if he’s not doing things what most consider the proper way or even when he’s a little tired, he can knock guys out. Think about this, it’s hard to teach a kid anything now because whenever they have a problem, they can go to their computer. How the hell am I supposed to teach you, man? If I’m trying to teach you to spell and whenever you want, you can just type it into your phone and if you get close, it’s going to finish the word for you? What the fuck, man. It’s going to be hard. If you get it wrong four times, you’re just going to look it up. So Breland could try to teach him the right mechanics, but why? Me and Deontay was talking one time and I told him there is no one out there that can teach you better how to throw that jab and drop that right hand behind it than Mark Breland can.