It remains to be seen into which category Johann “The Reptile” Duhaupas (32-2, 20 KOs) falls, but this much is certain: the 34-year-old Frenchman, who is ranked 12th by the WBC, is getting his dream crack at the organization’s champion, Deontay “The Bronze Bomber” Wilder (34-0, 33 KOs), before what could very well be the largest television audience to see a heavyweight title bout in 30 years.
A record 4.4 million pay-per-view subscriptions were sold for the May 2 welterweight unification clash between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao, but the cost to viewers was a steep $99.95 for high-definition and $89.95 for standard TV. NBC, which will televise Wilder-Duhaupas, is capable of reaching into 97-percent of U.S. households (112.8 million of them), virtually assuring the fight, originating from the Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Ala., of larger-than-May-Pac numbers even if a glut of televised college football games siphons off large chunks of the potential viewing audience.
This will be the first heavyweight title fight to be presented on free, over-the-air TV since Larry Holmes defended his WBC belt with a competitive unanimous decision over Carl “The Truth” Williams on May 20, 1985, in Reno, Nev., a bout which was also televised by NBC.
“It’s been 30 years. Thirty years,” Lou DiBella, who is promoting Wilder-Duhaupas, said of a drought that has lasted far longer than the time tinderbox-dry Southern California residents have been without an appreciable rainfall. “The idea of an American heavyweight champion defending his belt on free TV in prime time is huge. It’s good stuff.
“And Wilder is kind of an interesting guy. I think the American public is going to want to see him a little more after this fight. He’s going to be a compelling figure in the heavyweight division for a long time, on the basis of his size (6-foot-7, 229 pounds) and his punching power (97 percent of his bouts have ended in knockouts, highest among all heavyweight champions).”
Wilder, 29, also is aware of the significance of appearing in the first free, over-the-air heavyweight title bout since the mid-point of the Reagan presidency. It has become an overriding theme of this, the second defense of the championship he won on a unanimous decision over Bermane Stiverne on Jan. 17, more so than any threat posed to him by the virtually anonymous (at least in this country) Duhaupas, who will be making his ring debut in the U.S., and as an 12-to-1 underdog.
“For the first time in a long time (since Shannon Briggs briefly held the WBO belt from November 2006 to June 2007), an American is the heavyweight champ and the title is staying right here,” Wilder said. “For the longest time, our division was the division in boxing and now you are seeing a resurgence of that. Fighting on network TV gives us the opportunity to showcase ourselves to such a wider audience. People in our country have been waiting for a star in the division for a very long time, and I can promise you I am the man for the job.
“I’m excited because I love making history. When you get an opponent that’s never been knocked out and been in the game for a while, that’s exciting. My goal is to knock (Duhaupas) out, to be the first.”
But matchups are important, and Wilder – a native of Tuscaloosa, Ala., who grew up dreaming of playing football for the Alabama Crimson Tide – surely understands that squaring off against Duhaupas is like his favorite college team playing, say, Florida Atlantic or Louisiana-Monroe instead of LSU or Auburn. But Louisiana-Monroe did shock the Crimson Tide in 2007, which in its own way is the equivalent of Buster Douglas knocking out the supposedly invincible Mike Tyson in 1990.
Duhaupas wasn’t named as Wilder’s opponent until mid-August, which allowed precious little time to properly promote a heavyweight championship bout of any real consequence. Then again, Wilder has left himself open to the kind of media criticism that usually comes when a titlist appears to be loading up his plate with cream puffs. Even if skeptics can agree that the man from whom Wilder won the WBC crown, Stiverne, was what passes for upper-tier in these diluted times for boxing big men, the same can’t be said of fringe contender Eric Molina, whom Wilder stopped in nine rounds, also in Birmingham.
Although Duhaupas does have a points victory over former world title challenger Manuel Charr, which earned him his WBC ranking, a partial list of some of the other opponents he’s beaten – Janne Katajisto, Fabrice Aurieng, Kotatsu Takehara, Igoris Borucha, Pavels Dolgovs, Aleksandrs Selezens, Rakdoslav Miltunovic, Frank Wuestenberghs and Zoltan Petranyl – have tongue-twisting names and, if anything, they’re even more unknown to American fight fans than Duhaupas himself.
“I tell people all the time, ‘Don’t look at what the name is,’” Wilder said. “You have to look past that.”
And so you do, cautions DiBella, who understands that unfamiliarity with a particular fighter does not necessarily mean he’s incapable of handling himself with reasonable aplomb.
“Even (Muhammad) Ali caught flak for some of the guys he fought, and (Joe) Frazier did, too,” DiBella noted. “If you fight four times in a year (Duhaupas will be Wilder’s third bout of 2015, and squeezing in another before the end of the year is not out of the question), they all can’t be a (Wladimir) Klitschko or an (Alexander) Povetkin.
“Duhaupas is a real big guy (6-5, 230) that’s been around a long time. He’s fought other top Europeans, maybe not to the extent of the Klitschkos, but real guys. And don’t forget, he’s never been knocked out, never been on his back. When you fight someone who can say that, and he has a real good record, it’s not a walkover. Duhaupas is a real heavyweight, and any real heavyweight is potentially dangerous.”
But words never have counted as much as punches, and history always is viewed from what over time becomes the prevailing perspective. If Duhaupas -- or even Wilder -- doesn’t deliver where it counts, inside the ropes, there is a chance that the first free, over-the-air heavyweight title bout in prime time in three decades might also be the last for quite a spell.
Bernard Fernandez, a five-term president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, received the Nat Fleischer Award from the BWAA in April 1999 for lifetime achievement and was inducted into the Pennsylvania Boxing Hall of Fame in 2005, as well as the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame in 2013. The New Orleans-born sports writer has worked in the industry since 1969 and pens a weekly column on the Sweet Science for Sherdog.com.