Deontay Wilder has shared the ring with some of the heavyweight division’s biggest punchers — yet the opponent he says hit him hardest is not the one most fans would expect.
The former WBC heavyweight champion is widely credited with injecting excitement back into the division, thanks largely to his concussive power, which flattened 43 of the 44 men he defeated.
Obvious candidates include Luis Ortiz, who wobbled “The Bronze Bomber” during their first meeting in 2018, and Tyson Fury, who overwhelmed Wilder in their 2020 rematch before flooring him three times in their 2021 epic trilogy bout. Then there is China’s Zhilei Zhang, who showed little mercy when clubbing Wilder to a fifth-round stoppage victory in 2024.
In an interview with Vegas Insider Wilder’s surprise choice reaches back more than a decade — and to a country not typically associated with heavyweight punchers.
“When I think about the hardest, I can remember that the feeling in the ring was Johann Duhaupas, the Frenchman. Every time he hit me with his jab, I kept thinking in my head, ‘God damn, he hit hard. He got grits in his gloves.’”
In the second defence of his WBC title, Wilder was matched with ‘The Reptile’, who had gone the distance just nine times in his previous 34 bouts. A partisan crowd of more than 8,000 in Wilder’s hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, watched their man systematically break Duhaupas down, leaving him battered and bloodied by the time the fight was stopped in the 11th round.
The challenger did have his moments, however, most notably in the second round, when Wilder’s left eye began to swell noticeably.
“I kept saying, ‘I can’t keep taking these jabs.’ He was the only fighter that made me really think like that. If I got hit, I was like, ‘Dang, that hurt.’
“That’s the one I remember. So I always give him that gratitude and that acknowledgement. Salute, bro. I still think about you. He hit me so hard, I still think about him!”
Wilder went on to conquer the heavyweight division with a right hand that became his calling card, but even the sport’s most feared punchers remember the nights they felt it coming back at them. For Johann Duhaupas, it was one brutal defeat — and an unlikely place in heavyweight folklore.
