The Battle of the Broken!
Deontay Wilder has an amateur defeat on his record to another British rival who "couldn’t move" in the ring due to an ankle injury from a Sunday league football match.
Danny Price of Scarborough profited from a walk-over when he met the future world heavyweight champion in 2007 in Beijing.
A year later Wilder would win an Olympic bronze medal but, suffering with an injury against Price, never realised that his British opponent was suffering just as badly!
"He pulled out before a punch was thrown," Price told Sky Sports. "His shoulder went.
"I had a bad foot for the fight and we were both on the verge of pulling out.
"I did my ankle. I never told anybody at the time but I played 11-a-side football two weeks earlier, I loved playing football. My amateur boxing coaches would have gone barmy if they knew. I look back now and think: 'What an idiot!'"
Price, then a 19-year-old cruiserweight with an amateur win over Tony Bellew, hid his football injury in the early part of this 2007 tournament in Beijing.
"With a bad ankle I struggled through my first two fights – I beat a good Chinese kid and a Kazakh," he remembered. "But I couldn't move in the second fight so was on the verge of pulling out of the third fight.
"But then Wilder pulled out because of his shoulder – I was delighted because I couldn't walk!"
Wilder went on to represent the United States at the Olympics a year later and eventually became the WBC heavyweight champion with a feted knockout record until his reign was ended by Tyson Fury.
Although Price thought he profited from the walk-over on the night, in hindsight he was robbed of the opportunity to earn a victory that would stand the test of time.
"I would have beaten him back then. I am 100 percent confident of that," Price said. "He wasn't technically great, he was wild. He threw big, daft overhand rights. He didn't look well-schooled.
"He wasn't a big puncher as an amateur. Look at his record and there aren't too many stoppages – he wasn't a massive puncher, he was just big, tall and rangy.
"But he was big and size does matter at cruiserweight."
Price, who never told his coaches about the football injury, shared the ring with Oleksandr Usyk a few months later, suffering a points loss, and later compiled an unbeaten nine-fight record before ending his professional career in 2013.
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