By accident or design there is only one exit from Camagüey, the ramshackle city in central Cuba where Luis Ortiz was born nearly 39 years ago. Myth has it the confusing web of alleyways leading nowhere in particular was designed to trap raiding pirates, luring them on to hopelessness and destruction.

True or not, the story is an apt metaphor for Ortiz’s career. A heavyweight southpaw with educated power, he is the ultimate boxing nightmare and is as hard to avoid as he is to find. Of the 28 opponents who have tried to corner him only four have finished the assignment standing up, none with a victorious hand raised.

On Saturday night at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn Ortiz hopes to entice Deontay Wilder into a web from which he cannot escape – because, for all his knee-knocking presence and achievements, the WBC champion retains some of the rawness he brought with him from the briefest of amateur careers. This is the seventh defence of his title; it could prove the most difficult.

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Ortiz is cut from different cloth. As a Cuban amateur he was as accomplished as many of his compatriots, although he could not get the better of the then estimable Odlanier Solís in five attempts. As a professional he soon became the ogre nobody wanted or needed and he toiled anonymously until two years ago when, in sight of challenging the winner of the world title fight between Wladimir Klitschko and Tyson Fury, he failed a drugs test. Then another. In stepped Anthony Joshua. Out went Klitschko. On foraged Ortiz.

On Saturday night he emerges from the shadows again in his 29th paid outing, indignant still at what he regards as a slur on his reputation and ready for a more physical examination of his spirit. Between them the champion and the challenger have 67 unblemished performances, with a bone-chilling 38 and 24 knockouts respectively.

At the final press conference in New York they exchanged the usual pleasantries, as well as an inordinately long stare-down, and it was generally agreed Wilder, younger by six years even if callow in boxing terms, was the rightful favourite.

In a schedule that has rarely taken him far from his home state of Alabama Wilder has ventured across the Atlantic occasionally – to spar with David Haye among others – and was scheduled to fight Dereck Chisora at Wembley in 2013 but was arrested in Las Vegas for domestic assault. When he did visit he knocked out Audley Harrison in a round.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Deontay Wilder knocks out Bermane Stiverne in the first round during their rematch for Wilder’s WBC heavyweight title in November. Photograph: Al Bello/Getty Images

Thereafter he steadily built an aura of fear, winning 19 of his fights in the first round. Others, probably, were won before his opponent set foot in the ring. He was not quite Mike Tyson but he was wild and free-wheeling in the ring. “Bomb squad!” became his loud and funny calling card.

And now he meets an almost equally respected foe, an undefeated veteran who, like the streets of Camagüey, is going nowhere, if he does not emerge with the biggest scalp of his career. They will play to their known strengths. If Wilder can find a way around Ortiz’s artful right-hand lead and avoid his left hook he should prevail by stoppage. If not, he will lose on points.

Something else besides an ability to render opponents unconscious binds them: personal sorrow. Wilder took up boxing at 18 only to earn money for his ailing daughter, Naieya, who was born with spina bifida.

Contrary to the defection script Ortiz turned professional not to escape communism but to pay for medical care for his daughter, who was born with a necrosis of the fingers. Amputation was considered. Ortiz said in a 2016 interview with seensportmagazine.com that he would have had his fingers removed, too, if that happened, “so that, when she was born, she could say I am just like my daddy”.

There are not many like her daddy; nor are there many like the man he will try to knock out on Saturday night. It should be some fight.