Teddy Atlas has urged a former long-reigning heavyweight champion to hang the gloves up for good.
Trainer turned analyst Atlas has been a strong advocate for fighters leaving the sport at the right time, having seen many stay too long and suffer permanent damage.
Despite suffering back-to-back defeats, and four in his last five outings, former WBC world heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder is just weeks away from making his return to the sport.
The 39-year-old from Tuscaloosa, Alabama will face countryman Tyrrell Herndon in a non-title bout at the Charles Koch Arena in Wichita on Friday June 27.
It will be Wilder’s first ring appearance since he was knocked out by Zhilei Zhang in brutal fashion last June, in what many fans and pundits believed would have been the 39-year-old’s final bout.
As he gears up for the 48th outing of his storied tenure, legendary analyst and trainer Teddy Atlas told Slingo that believes ‘The Bronze Bomber’ should be calling time on his career, admitting he is ‘concerned’ for the 39-year-old.
“The last thing to go, George Foreman showed, is that the last thing to go with a fighter is power. As long as you have power, you’ve got a shot. But the way he’s looked, the punishment he took against Zhilei Zhang.
“Wilder took a lot of punishment in his last few fights. And the way he took it, how clean he got hit, and how he reacted to it, just as a human being, forget trainer, promoter, anything, just as a human being, I’d be concerned about him fighting again.”
Wilder has set his sights on making another push towards becoming world heavyweight champion once again, but must come through his upcoming showdown with Herndon without a hitch and in impressive fashion. Atlas, like many others, is unlikely to change his view even if he does so.
