EXCLUSIVE Deontay Wilder: My plan was to just be a journeyman before I set my sights on the Olympics

MY plan was to be a journeyman.

“I didnโ€™t know anything about amateur boxing, I knew about Muhammad Ali and him going to the Olympics and stuff but thatโ€™s all I knew about amateur boxing. So I started training with all the pros, sparring with all the pros, until 2007 came along, the Olympics was being talked about and I remember asking, โ€˜What is the Olympics?โ€™ because my knowledge wasnโ€™t very clear.

“They started telling me about it and I was like โ€˜How do we get there?โ€™ Nobody in the gym knew how to get there because we didnโ€™t have a guy at the time who succeed past the national level yet alone the Olympics. But we knew one thing, that if we kept winning, we had a chance to get there.

“I remember saying โ€˜Iโ€™m gonna make it to the Olympicsโ€™. I had a lot of guys in the gym doubting me because I was still the fresh kid, but I knew that I was in it for the right reasons and that it was my calling to box. And from that point on I started winning all the Golden Gloves, all the national Golden Gloves, the Olympics trials, and then I finally qualified too.

“Itโ€™s been a journey for me, man. Just thinking about it, because thatโ€™s just half of the accomplishments that Iโ€™ve done, describing itโ€™s bringing back all those feelings man, everything I had to go through, the sacrifice. Because I was still a father too, so I still had two jobs, and still trying to box full-time.

“If they understood my story and what Iโ€™ve been through, people would appreciate me a little bit more.”

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