Accidental champion Deontay Wilder was the American dream

The Alabaman who started boxing at 21 to pay for his daughter’s medical care went further than anyone could have imagined. Too few people appreciated what he brought to the table

He was never supposed to be a boxer. In a different timeline Deontay Wilder might have been scoring touchdowns or throwing down tomahawk dunks for the University of Alabama. That was the dream growing up poor in the shadow of Bryant-Denny Stadium on the streets of sports-mad Tuscaloosa, where he excelled for Central High School’s football and basketball teams. And it was still the goal when the 6ft 7in teenager enrolled at nearby Shelton State Community College, where he sought to raise his grades enough to transfer and play for the home town Crimson Tide.

That all changed with a routine visit to the doctor’s office in 2005, when he learned his unborn daughter with his then-girlfriend would be born with spina bifida, an incurable birth defect in which the spine does not close fully during development. Right then Wilder, only 19, knew he needed money and he needed it yesterday.