LOS ANGELES — He clutched the gun and let his mind wander, to think of how much better things would be if he just squeezed the trigger. He’d eliminate the pain, the fears, the worries, the heartaches.

It would all be gone, wiped away in an instant.

Easy.

Deontay Wilder was years from being a household name. He was a poor young man with an abiding belief that he was meant to do something in this life, something meaningful, something wonderful. He struggled to navigate the world in front of him, though, unable to understand why he hurt so much.

Why was it his daughter who had been born with spina bifida? Why wasn’t he going to be able to support his family the way he wanted to do, to be the father, the son, the husband, the brother that he wanted to be?

Life came hard and fast, and Wilder didn’t really know how to handle it. Emotions swirled and trouble lurked, seemingly, at every corner.

Pull that trigger, he believed, and the anxiety, the doubt, the fears would be gone forever.

Boom.

As close as he may have coming to making that fateful press of the trigger, he knew that taking his own life was not that answer, that ending his own life would simply have been swapping one set of problems for another.

“You don’t think about what affect it would cause for your family, your daughter, your kids and so forth and so on,” Wilder said during a wide-ranging half-hour conversation with Yahoo Sports to promote his Feb. 22 rematch with Tyson Fury at the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas for the WBC and lineal heavyweight titles.

“In that state of mind, you just become selfish. You think of the inner pain and the outer pain that you’re feeling right at that very moment in time.”

His daughter, Naieya, was born in 2005 with spina bifida, a birth defect that about 2,000 children are born with in the U.S. every year. The backbone that forms the spine doesn’t close all the way and leads to mental and physical problems for the unborn child, but more than 90 percent of the children born with it are able to lead full, long lives.

But Wilder was a teenager and he didn’t understand any of that when Naieya was born in 2005. He was attending junior college in Alabama and knew that his life would change in an instant. Whatever dreams and aspirations he had for his own life would have to be shelved, as he needed to find a way to pay for what were sure to be mounting medical bills.

He didn’t know much about spina bifida, but he knew enough about the American health care system to understand he was about to be flooded with bills.

He didn’t pull the trigger and take his own life and transfer his problems to someone else because, well, he is a fighter. He didn’t know how, but he knew he’d find a way to deal with the situation.

View photos Heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder hopes that his story provides a beacon of hope for others. (Action Images via Reuters/Andrew Couldridge) More

All of his life, Wilder had been blessed with an amazing work ethic. He’d held a slew of jobs, as a waiter, as a truck driver, and was willing to do whatever he needed to provide for his loved ones.

While he searched for answers, something inside told him that he was destined to be special, that he was meant to do great things.

“If I would have done that during that period of time, of course I’d never be where I am,” Wilder said.

He’s become a millionaire many times over and on Feb. 22, will earn a paycheck that will soar into the eight figures when he fights Fury in a rematch of their classic Dec. 1, 2018 bout. That fight is memorable primarily because of the stunning ending.

Wilder is one of the hardest punchers in boxing history. Fury’s former trainer, Ben Davison, told Yahoo Sports following Wilder’s seventh-round knockout of Luis Ortiz in Las Vegas that he felt there was never a better puncher than Wilder.

“He’s the biggest puncher not just in heavyweight history, but in boxing history,” Davison told Yahoo Sports in November.

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