By Peter Silkov
Writer For The Boxing Glove.
Who can tell exactly when it happened. Was it that brutal right hand that dumped Wilder to the canvas in the 3rd round? Was it the body punch that floored him two rounds later? Or was it one of the other multitude of punches that Tyson Fury landed upon Deontay Wilder on that February 22nd night earlier this year? Somewhere amid this brutal beating (and make no mistake, it was a brutal beating), Deontay Wilder lost his touch with reality. And it seems that he hasn't regained it yet.
Maybe it began during the ring introductions before the beginning of their second fight last February. Despite Wilder being the 'home' fighter, it soon became clear from the imbalance of cheers received by each man that Tyson Fury, not Deontay Wilder, was the Las Vegas crowd's clear favorite. At the moment when Wilder, the defending WBC world heavyweight champion (though he was already considered by many to be a 'cheese' champion after his 'draw' with Fury in their first fight) received more boos than cheers when his name was announced, it was hard not to feel a little sorry for him.
Indeed after the fight was halted halfway through the 7th round, Wilder was a sorry sight, with his face swollen and misshapen and his blood splattering from his nose, ears, and mouth. Tyson Fury had done what he had spent the previous months saying he would do; he had out-punched and overpowered the puncher. Fourteen months after giving Wilder a boxing lesson, but being robbed of victory by a scandalous draw, Fury had taken matters out of the unreliable (to be polite) hands of the judges by adopting the role of the aggressor rather than the counter puncher. In doing so, Tyson had proved that he could punch with power if he wanted to and that Deontay Wilder was at a loss when compelled to fight going backward. Deontay had been given another lesson in fighting by 'The Gypsy King,' only this time it was a much more painful lesson than in their first encounter.
Yet Wilder had gone out on his shield. No one watching this fight from the 3rd round onwards would criticize him for being pulled out, despite the old-time tradition of a heavyweight champion being expected to lose his title via either through the judges or being rendered senseless and prostrate upon the canvas. Indeed as he took his beating, Wilder showed the kind of courage and toughness that fighters usually hope they are not called upon to display. It was the courage of a beaten man who refused to stay down. Wilder was essentially beaten in the 3rd round by Fury and probably should have been pulled out of the fight after the 5th round at the latest. At times after the 3rd round, Fury seemed almost unwilling to continue handing out the punishment, as his opponent staggered and failed in front of him, groggy and bleary-eyed, and barely able to raise his arms in a pitiful attempt at defense.
The fact that Wilder protested when Mark Breland finally threw in the towel in the 7th round was at first yet another display of his stubborn courage. He had been beaten and beaten badly, but at that moment, it had been an admirable defeat.
If only someone could explain to Wilder that there is no shame in an honorable defeat. It was some time before the battered Wilder was able to leave the ring that night, and ever since he left, his behavior and pronouncements have become less and less admirable. If ever there was a prize for the bitterest loser in boxing, Deontay Wilder would win it hands down. (Indeed, rumor has it that as you read this, the venerable WBC are working on a nice new shiny belt with which to award Deontay for his courageous excess of sour grapes!)
Deontay Wilder will not go down in history as the greatest heavyweight champion of all time, nor will he go down as one of the division's greatest ever punchers (despite what some deluded fans might still say). However, there is a strong possibility that he will go down as the worst loser in the history of the Heavyweight division.
The hail of increasingly smelly sour grapes began to fall almost as soon as Wilder had been helped back to his dressing room, following his pugilistic spanking, by Tyson Fury.
First, we heard that Wilder's trainer, the much-respected former Olympic Gold medalist and world welterweight champion, Mark Breland, had been wrong to pull Wilder out in the 7th round. Not only had he been wrong, but his actions had been a betrayal against Wilder. This is despite the overall majority of those who witnessed the match feeling that, if anything, Wilder should have been pulled out earlier rather than later and that Breland's actions may have saved Wilder's long-term health, not to mention any remaining boxing career.
The strength of Wilder's ill-feeling against the man who had guided him to world title glory was illustrated by the sight of Breland, in the aftermath of his fighter's defeat, standing weeping outside Wilder's locked dressing room door—literally locked out of the room. Wilder would go on to publicly fire Breland from his team, despite Breland being the only member of his entourage who might be able to turn his career around at this point.
As the weeks following the fight began to pile up, the mountain of sour grapes steadily piled up alongside them. Moving on from his crass treatment of Breland to a more creative line, Wilder was soon saying that his defeat was down to his outlandish ring walk costume, which had been equipped with some rather large batteries whose weight had left him befuddled and drained before he had even taken a punch!
"He didn't hurt me at all, but the simple fact is … that my uniform was way too heavy for me," Wilder said. "I didn't have no legs from the beginning of the fight. In the third round, my legs were just shot all the way through.
The fact that Wilder has made a habit of wearing such costumes to the ring for most of his previous title defenses was conveniently ignored. Also ignored is Wilder's practice of training in a weighted suit, which weighs as much, if not more, than the elaborate disaster in which he entered the ring for the second Fury match. Indeed, in a podcast interview sometime before the Fury fights, Wilder talked openly with Joe Rogan about the benefits of training in a weighted suit.
"We want to activate the fast-twitch muscles," Wilder said. "We do everything with rapid speed; if I'm doing anything that consists of me moving my feet, it's sprinting. Now I wear a 45-pound vest on me as well as doing all my exercises and everything that I do to have that extra weight on me."
But if we thought that the costume excuse was bizarre, we hadn't seen (or heard) nothing yet. After his ring walk costume excuse had been met with a mixture of polite incredulity and outright derision, Wilder's reasons for his defeat took a darker, altogether nastier turn.
While remaining secluded and hidden from the public, Wilder began to issue accusations of Tyson Fury cheating, not just in their second fight but in their first one as well. Wilder accused Fury of having had his gloves tampered with, claiming that his hands had been unbandaged beneath his gloves. To support this claim, Wilder and some of his shadowy supporters released photos of Fury's gloves supposedly looking 'floppy' during the fight. To anyone with even half-decent knowledge of the rigorous procedures that a fighter's gloves go through before they end up on a fighter's hands at fight time, Wilder's accusations were ludicrous.
Gloves are closely guarded before any fight, but especially before title fights. A fighter will then be watched by members of the local boxing commission and also by members of his opponent's team, as he has his hands taped, bandaged, and finally gloved up. All gloves then go through an examination after the fight as well. Despite boxing's reputation as a 'redlight' sport, cases of fighters having their gloves altered before a fight are actually remarkably rare. In years past, fighters used to be gloved up in the ring directly before a fight, with a member of the opponent's team overlooking proceedings. One of the few cases of glove tampering to come to light is the notorious Luis Resto vs. Billy Collins debacle in the mid-80s, when Luis Resto had the padding removed from his gloves prior to his fight with Billy Collins Jr, and went on to inflict career-ending injuries upon Collins, before being exposed in the fight's aftermath after Collins father shook Resto's still gloved hand and found himself squeezing bare knuckles. The measures that have been adopted since this dark incident, which remains a terrible blemish upon boxing's history (especially when taking into account the lack of any compensation which Collins received despite losing his career) has made doubly sure that when fights are overseen as they should be by the relevant authorities, any kind of dirty tricks with fighters gloves should remain impossible.
This was a major reason why Antonio Margarito was caught in 2009 when trying to enter his match against Shane Mosely with doctored gloves. Margarito was caught when officials overseeing him being gloved up spotted that he had wet pads and plaster secreted within his bandages. Although the fight went ahead (after Margarito had been safely re-gloved), Margarito's standing in boxing was never the same again, and he was later, alongside his trainer, suspended for a while from the sport (it should have been for life!)
So the chances of Fury entering the ring with doctored gloves is highly improbable. It would mean that his team and members of Wilder's team, plus the Nevada boxing commission officials, would all have to be in on the conspiracy together. And those photos that Wilder and some of his misguided followers have banded around are also nothing to do with any proof either. They simply reveal a picture of how a boxing glove can look distorted at the point of impact, just as a fighter's face often looked distorted in photos under the weight and physical shock of taking a punch.
As the months have gone on, Wilder's allegations of Fury cheating have grown more and more wild (excuse the pun!) and seem to be increasingly the ravings of someone who has lost touch with reality, rather than the cries of a man who has been wronged.
The fact that Wilder's allegations have jumped about to almost every aspect of the fight tends to underline how tenuous a relationship each allegation has to reality and truth. Even Wilder's determination to enter the ring with Fury for the third time must also be questioned, despite his protestations that it is Fury who is attempting to duck out of a third encounter.
First, they were due to fight in the summer, but when Wilder showed a disinclination to move ahead with final plans for the match, a date was set for December. Again, however, Wilder and his team were unresponsive and did not communicate with Fury or his team to finalize negotiations. In mid-October, Fury announced that he was tired of waiting around for Wilder and that he would move ahead and fight someone else in December. Cue Wilder suddenly leaping out of the shadows in which he has been hidden since February and issuing a rambling attack on Fury via a video message which was by turns, funny, sad, outrageous, and ultimately rather disturbing.
In his first public appearance since his defeat by Fury, Wilder repeated his allegations about Fury's gloves and expanded his repertoire by issuing a whole raft of new claims. These included a new variation on the glove allegations; Wilder contended that Fury had been holding an egg or rather an egg-shaped object in one of his gloves during the fight!
"I highly believe you put something hard in your glove, something the size and the shape of an egg weight. It's the reason why the side of my face swelled up in an egg-weight form. And it left a dent in my face, as well".
But it gets better. Wilder also included amongst his ramblings that his water had been spiked! by none other than Mark Breland!
"My water was tampered with, bro," Wilder said. "I know what it's like to have some heavy workout and how you feel after. You know what I'm saying? S–t, I can have sex and still go play ball and dunk and do what I got to do. But this feeling right here, it was a different feeling. It's like I had no control of my body. My legs was weak and stuff like that. Although my body was weak, my mind was very strong. "When do you ever see me go down on a body shot? He didn't even hit me; he pushed me. When did you ever see me falling back like that? When did you ever see me not being the aggressor?"
Added to this, lamented Wilder, the referee Kenny Bayless was biased in favor of Fury and under the influence of alcohol. In addition to this, Fury placed a gypsy curse upon him before the fight and caused Wilder's ears to bleed by scratching them with his fingernails!
Wilder's attack upon the honesty of his trainer Mark Breland is especially reprehensible as Breland is respected throughout boxing as one of the game's nice guys with an impeccable character, who has given years of his life to training Wilder. While the 'Bronze Bomber's deficiencies in the ring are all too visible now after being exposed twice by Fury, the success he has enjoyed up till now in his career is mostly down to the training he received from Breland.
Deontay's accusations that the referee showed favoritism to Fury during the fight is also wide off the mark, especially when you consider that the referee inexplicably took a point away from Fury during the 5th round while also managing to give the already badly beaten Wilder a significant break in the process. This practice of referee's giving Wilder a breather in fights when he is hurt is not an isolated incident; take a peek at Wilder vs. Ortiz 1.
Wilder's most recent allegations (at the time of writing) regarding Fury placing a Gypsy curse upon him and also making his ears bleed with his fingernails are too absurd to even give a serious mention. Rumour has it, though, that Tyson Fury is now being lined up to play Wolverine in the next X-MEN movie.
Wilder's blizzard of bizarre allegations has left Tyson Fury himself shocked and scratching his head:
"I think he has lost his marbles! First of all, it was the suit; then it was the bicep injury, then his trainer was on our team, then the referee was against him, then I had weights in my gloves… 'Now someone has spiked his water… It's one of those things, isn't it."
Wilder has begun to resemble a fly fisher in many ways, flinging out almost random excuses and defamatory allegations weekly while waiting to see who in the media will take a bite.
Sadly there are those who have jumped upon the Wilder bandwagon and tried to support his allegations. It's a disappointing fact about human nature that if you say a lie which is big enough, loud enough, for long enough, some will come to believe it. We have seen this in today's politics. For some, the truth doesn't exist; the truth is what you want it to be and what you can make other people believe. Certain people can be talked into believing almost anything, especially when it reinforces their own prejudices and personal agendas.
Despite his tremendous comeback from depression and substance abuse and his brave comments about his mental health problems, which have inspired so many people with similar issues, there are still those who would like to see Tyson Fury fail and fall. In many ways, his face still doesn't fit, and it never will for certain people.
However, most of the serious media and boxing writers have made their feelings known about Wilder and his allegations. What respect he did have has been irretrievably lost in many quarters. Yet certain people will seek to use his claims for their own ends, with no real care for the well being of Wilder. ESPN now seems to be eager for a 3rd fight between Wilder and Fury and has blocked a planned Dec 5th fight Fury was to have in London against an unknown opponent.
It seems for some tawdry allegations of cheating add up to dollar signs. A fight which many were not interested in seeing after Fury's one-sided victory in February has now taken a more inviting appearance thanks to Wilder's allegations. It is a shame to see Wilder forcing his way into the 3rd fight against Fury with defamation.
But does Wilder even want a 3rd fight with Fury himself? After backing out of a December rematch with Fury, there is every chance that Wilder will further delay the rematch beyond the now proposed Feb/March 2021 date. Questions must remain about Wilder's true state of mind and whether he should even be allowed back into the ring at this point. In his recent October video, the random and erratic nature of his allegations and his rambling speech seem to point towards a man who has become unhinged. Is he really in the right state mentally to be allowed inside a boxing ring again?
The clues have always been there that Deontay Wilder is not the most stable of men. There was that skillfully hushed-up incident some years back when he was arrested for beating up an escort and locking her in his hotel closet after a cocaine-fueled sex party went wrong. This case (and the aforementioned escort) suddenly when very quiet and disappeared very quickly. Then there were Wilder's declarations that he wanted a 'body' on his record. An extremely distasteful remark which he made on multiple occasions. Indeed the usually very malleable WBC president Mauricio Saliman was moved to issue Wilder a rather 'stern' public warning about these dark 'boasts.' Most recently, Wilder has declared that Tyson Fury needs to make 'funeral arrangements' when they fight again. We can imagine the fuss that would explode had Fury issued such distasteful threats towards Wilder; he would probably have been banned from the sport if he had behaved in the same way.
Let's be honest here Deontay Wilder is not a classy guy. Indeed class and Wilder belong on different planets. Perhaps some of Wilder's bitterness comes from his lack of popularity at home, in the United States, and the humiliation he must feel deep inside knowing that it was only when he defended his WBC title against Tyson Fury that he finally achieved the kind of notoriety he had been craving. Not only that, but the attention which he finally received was bittersweet, as most observers perceived Fury to be the rightful 'winner' of their first fight, with Wilder holding onto his title with an unfair draw. The recognition which Tyson Fury received in the aftermath of their first encounter, for his amazing return from addiction and depression, and his recovery from THAT knockdown in the 12th and last round, left Wilder pretty much playing second fiddle to Fury from their first fight onwards. The truth is that for all his protestations that he had done Fury a favor by 'giving him a shot' at his WBC title, Wilder was having trouble bringing in enough fans to fill up a warehouse prior to his matches with Fury.
Wilder vs. Fury 1 was the first time that Deontay Wilder had been able to generate a PPV title defense. Fury gave Wilder his biggest audience and his biggest purse's. Add to this that certainly for their first fight, Wilder believed he was taking on a fighter ripe for the taking after Fury's years of drug and alcohol addiction, mental health problems, and inactivity. It's not hard to imagine Wilder's disappointment when his big plans blew up in his face. The fight, which was supposed to make him a star, instead saw his flaws exposed to the world by a man who had recently lost ten stone in 12 months and was taking part in his first competitive fight in over three years. The controversial draw saw Fury hailed as the morale victor and Wilder's stock crashed.
The run-up to the rematch saw Wilder coming out with allegations that Fury had failed to beat the count in that 12th round; he also tried to claim that Fury was concussed from that fight and that he had 'ruined' him. If these were mind games aimed at disturbing Fury, they failed miserably. Then there was the rematch, and the only prediction which came true was Fury's prediction that he would force the fight and take the verdict out of the judges' hands by stopping Wilder this time around.
Tyson Fury has beaten Deontay Wilder twice, not just physically but mentally as well.
The only real truth that has emerged from Wilder's recent ramblings is that he is a broken man who cannot accept that Tyson Fury is the better fighter and has beaten him twice fairly and squarely.
Is Wilder playing mind games with Fury with all these accusations?. Perhaps, but if these allegations were borne out of a rational attempt to throw Fury off his own mindset, you would think that they wouldn't be so random and illogical. The more excuses and accusations Wilder has come up with, the more he has simply exposed himself to ridicule and displayed just how damaged he has been, mentally and emotionally, by his fights with Fury. Like a certain world-renowned politician, Wilder's inability to accept defeat and his attempt to hide behind defamatory lies and accusations has reduced what standing he had amongst everyone except his most loyal/desperate of followers.
The truth is that a 3rd fight with Fury is probably the last thing that Wilder needs right now. And deep down, Wilder himself knows this, and for this reason, I expect Wilder to duck out of any February or March fight and seek another postponement. In the real world the only way that Wilder can punish Fury is by keeping him out of the ring and hanging on for the 3rd fight between them, which will probably never happen. I expect Wilder to string this out for as long as he can until he is either paid to step aside or is finally given his marching orders by ESPN after yet another failure to agree upon a date for the third match. By then, we could be into the middle of next year, and Fury will have been inactive for almost 18 months with the AJ fight plans put into a spin.
In the increasingly weird and wacky world of Deontay Wilder, keeping Fury out of the ring waiting for a rematch that will probably never happen is the only way he can gain some payback for the defeats and humiliation he has suffered against Fury.
Although losing his proposed December 5th homecoming fight must be a frustration to Tyson Fury, he shows no sign of letting Wilder's antics or accusations throwing him off track, which says a lot for the kind of condition that Fury is in these days, both physically and mentally.
He has even expressed concern for the mental state of Wilder and offered to give his help if asked:
"At the moment, I think Deontay Wilder has bigger issues to deal with than boxing.I am quite worried for his health and well being.I know he won't have wanted to lose after being an undefeated champion for so long, but there comes a time when you just have to accept it and move on.Wilder does not seem able to do that, he is holding on to malice feelings and making excuses, and I am concerned for his mental well being because some of his statements are ludicrous. But I am only a phone call away; if I can help him, then I will because it seems this fight has really affected his well being."
Ironically, the psychological and physical damage which Tyson Fury has inflicted on Deontay Wilder is nothing compared to what the bitterness inside the former champion has allowed him to do to himself. When a man loses all vestiges of honor, integrity, and self-awareness, he has truly become a beaten man.
Bitterness is the ugliest of all defeats.
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