While Deontay Wilder was preparing for his successful return to the boxing ring Friday, June 27, he remained embroiled in a fight for the custody of his 6-year-old daughter, court records show.
Wilder, the former heavyweight world champion, was denied joint custody of his youngest daughter on June 18 – nine days before he beat Tyrrell Herndon by TKO in the seventh round of Wilder’s first fight in more than a year.
The ongoing court battle was triggered when Shuntel “Telli’’ Swift, Wilder’s former fiancé and the mother of his youngest daughter, was granted a temporary restraining order in June 2024.
Wilder, 39, had lost four of his previous five fights during a stretch when Swift said the boxer had abused her.
A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge granted Swift’s request after she said the boxer has physically assaulted her, including by choking, at least 10 times since their relationship began in 2015 and that his mental health has deteriorated during his struggles in the ring, according to the request for a temporary restraining order.
In granting the temporary restraining order, the court required Wilder’s subsequent visits with his daughter, Kaorii, to be monitored – an ongoing stipulation.
In seeking joint custody of Kaorii – the youngest of his three daughters – Wilder earlier this month filed a court document that in part cited the relationship between Swift and her boyfriend, John Johnson III, an NFL safety who played most recently with the Los Angeles Rams.
Wilder said Kaorii had stayed at Johnson’s house in Southern California since June and the living arrangement had resulted in 18 unexcused absences from school, according to the court records.
Johnson’s house is 45 miles away from a house owned by Wilder where Kaorii has lived with Swift until the two were forced out of the home last year as a result of flooding, according to court records.
It was one of multiple issues cited by Wilder in a 266-page document arguing his daughter’s life has “not been stable’’ while Swift retained sole custody of the child.
But on June 18, the court ruled against Wilder.
In addition to being denied joint legal and physical custody of his daughter, the court wrote there “needs to be some compliance with the current orders’’ for Wilder to attend previously stipulated anger management and cognitive analytic therapy, according to court records.
The next hearing is set for July 14 and Swift and Wilder were set to meet and confer on the concept of unmonitored visitation, according to court records.
After Wilder’s victory against Herndon in his successful return to the ring, Wilder said, “I laid off a long time getting myself back together, getting myself mentally, physically, emotionally back together. It’s been a long road for me.’’