The Skyy boxing gym outside Tuscaloosa is hard to spot from the end of the dirt road, tucked into the rear of the nondescript aluminum-sided building on a quiet offshoot of Route 30 not far from the banks of Black Warrior River. There’s little outward indication the two converted units in the rear are the training headquarters of one of the world’s most accomplished prizefighters, but there’s no mistaking the sense of occasion when Deontay Wilder peels up in a customized Lamborghini Aventador with a faux gator-skin wrap, an audacious choice in any context but positively extraterrestrial against west Alabama’s modest backdrop.
It’s two days after Thanksgiving and this normally bustling college town is mostly deserted, the University of Alabama student body having decamped either home for the holiday or to Auburn for the annual Iron Bowl grudge match that divides communities, friendships and families across this football-mad state, but the champ is here. There was a time when Wilder would have been one of his country’s most famous sportsmen, which makes the 32-year-old among the biggest casualties of boxing’s gradual retreat toward the margins of American life. At one time the heavyweight championship of the world was the most prestigious and coveted title in all of sports, but the fight game’s lack of central authority has wrought four major sanctioning bodies that have served to create confusion among casual observers while cheapening the currency of a championship.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
