Former heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder marked his much-anticipated return to the ring with a thunderous knockout punch that stopped Robert Helenius in the opening round of their bout at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Saturday night.
A punch like that one declared Wilder's intentions to be a force in the division. In case it wasn't clear by his performance, he emphasized that point after the fight.
«Deontay Wilder is back,» Deontay Wilder said in his post-fight interview on Fox. «The excitement in the heavyweight division is back.»
Wilder was making his return to in-ring action for the first time since he lost to Tyson Fury last October. After Fury got up from a 12th-round knockdown in their first bout in 2018, the Englishman became the first person to ever get up from a Wilder knockdown in split draw. Fury then proceeded to win the next two fights by knockout, including their bout last year that featured five knockdowns between them. It was considered by many as the fight of the year.
In his first fight since the Fury trilogy, Wilder (43-2-1, 42 KOs) opted to fight Helenius, a Finnish contender who sparred with Wilder for his bouts with Fury. Helenius (31-4, 20 KOs) was coming off two straight knockout wins over Adam Kownacki.
«I knew what he is capable of,» Wilder said in his post-fight interview. «I didn't take him for granted. I could look in his eyes. He wanted to be his first countrymen heavyweight champion.»
Feeling Wilder's power in headgear is one thing. Trying to withstand that force in an actual bout is an entirely different matter. Helenius never even made it back to his corner.
In the closing seconds of the first round, Helenius tried to land a combination on Wilder from a distance. The former
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