There are fighters who make excuses and then there's Deontay Wilder.
To be clear, when any fighter loses, it's rare that they don't offer some kind of excuse why they came up short. Even when they say that they'll make no excuses, it's usually followed by an excuse. We get it, it's the fighter way. And losing is difficult.
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Wilder suffered the first loss of his professional career in a rematch with Tyson Fury in February 2020 in what was one of the biggest heavyweight fights in recent memory. The former WBC champion was throttled from the opening bell by Fury and stopped in the seventh round. Rather than take the loss in stride, Wilder started firing off a series of excuses.
As we approach the third fight of this heavyweight trilogy, we revisit and rank Wilder's excuses for why he lost from most tame to completely outrageous.
6) Referee favoritism
Deontay Wilder has made some outlandish accusations regarding his first and only knockout loss. Of them, this one is the tamest. Wilder accused referee Kenny Bayless of favoring Fury in the 2020 rematch. How you ask? According to Wilder, Bayless was allowing Fury to get away with cheating while the rules were only there for Wilder to follow.
"Bayless had come in my dressing room, looked me in my eyes and said if I hit Fury in the back of the head – a rabbit punch – or hit off of the break, he would disqualify me or deduct two points from me," Wilder said to The Athletic. "I guess those rules just applied to me because they didn't apply to my opponent.
"(Fury) hit me in the back of the neck and the head all night and Bayless didn’t do anything about it, to the point I got lumps and bruises. That was a thing that was very frustrating to me.”
Do you know where else Wilder was hit all night? In the face.
Bayless did eventually deduct a point from Fury in the fifth round, but that wasn't good enough for Wilder. He wanted a disqualification. He wouldn't get it.
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5) Injured bicep
This one is also fair. Very few, if any, fighters are 100% healthy when they step into the ring. There's always some kind of nagging issue that they didn't want to reveal before the fight. But when they lose, it comes out that whatever physical ailments they had are the reason why they lost. But an injury was one of the last things that Wilder suggested may have affected his performance. Rumors that he injured his bicep ahead of the fight with Fury came to the surface after Wilder's sparring partner Junior Fa made mention of it.
Wilder would get surgery on the injury and reveal that it was aggravated in the fight with Fury.
"Everything that happened, it happened the last 15 minutes until the fight," Wilder said to ESPN. "There's a lot of things that went on. There's a lot of things that I don't even want to talk about at this moment in time. I'm still reflecting on certain things, and I can't believe the things that happened to me. And they happened to me at that point in my career."
Could it have affected his performance? Certainly. But Wilder was out of that fight from the opening bell.
4) Heavy costume
So here's where the excuses become bizarre.
Just two days after being dominated by Fury, Wilder began doing interviews to give his side of the story. But what transpired in those interviews began an avalanche of excuses that spun out of control.
It all started when Wilder spoke with Yahoo's Kevin Iole and suggested that he was never hurt by Fury in the fight. Instead, it was the 40-pound suit that Wilder wore during his ring walk that ended up being the biggest blow of the night.
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“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. But I’m a warrior and people know that I’m a warrior. It could easily be told that I didn’t have legs or anything. A lot of people were telling me, ‘It looked like something was wrong with you.’ Something was, but when you’re in the ring, you have to bluff a lot of things. I tried my best to do so. I knew I didn’t have the legs because of my uniform."
Wilder wore a stunning suit as a tribute to Black History Month as rapper D-Smoke accompanied him to the ring with the song "Black Habits." But Wilder underestimated the size of the suit and realized when the bell range that he was in over his head.
“I was only able to put it on [for the first time] the night before, but I didn’t think it was going to be that heavy," he said. "It weighed 40, 40-some pounds with the helmet and all the batteries. I wanted my tribute to be great for Black History Month. I wanted it to be good and I guess I put that before anything.”
While the excuse is bizarre, it is also plausible to a degree. With Wilder's slim frame, it's very possible that a heavy suit could have compromised Wilder's in-ring conditioning. But the mere suggestion that a suit is to blame was mindblowing.
3) Trainer betrayed him
Tyson Fury was pummeling Deontay Wilder to the point where fans and pundits fully expected the fight to be stopped if Wilder wouldn't stay on the canvas. At no point was he ever in the fight but he refused to give up. Eventually, Wilder's corner had to save him from himself to prevent any irreversible damage.
Trainer Mark Breland threw in the towel in the seventh round, much to Wilder's dismay. The former champion stated he was "upset" with Breland and would eventually fire him, stating that he betrayed his orders to not throw in the towel. But Breland said that he was concerned that Wilder was bleeding from the ear and considered his options before stopping the fight.
"So, I’m not a doctor, but I know blood coming out of your ears and dazed eyes could be a brain issue," Breland told World Boxing News. "And power comes from your legs, and his legs were gone! – So I decided to stop the fight, and I’d do it all again.”
Wilder has gone as far as calling Breland a traitor for his actions and suggested that he was "influenced" by Fury's camp. And this is where things get bizarre.
“I believe he (Mark Breland) was part of it (the conspiracy)," Wilder told World Boxing News. "We had people of Fury’s team yelling throw the towel, and you got a rematch (to Breland). Even more so, I think he had something to do with (putting something in) my water as well."
We'll get to the water next.
Breland and Wilder have since engaged in an ugly war of words through media. Breland called Wilder "untrainable" but suggested that he saw Wilder "like a son" and threw in the towel to rescue him from further harm. It sounds like he was truly looking out for Wilder's interests but, for The Bronze Bomber, it's just another excuse.
2) Wilder's Water was "spiked"
Blaming Mark Breland for throwing in the towel is one thing, suggesting that he was involved in a conspiracy to cause Wilder to lose is another. But that's exactly what the former champion suggested happened.
“About 15 minutes before going out to the fight, warming up on the mitts, I was f--kin’ about to put a hole in the mitts," Wilder told 78 Sports TV. "It was perfect, I felt great, I was going in. Until I went into the ring — that transformation from the point of leaving my dressing room and going into the ring drinking certain water and stuff, trying to keep myself hydrated and stuff like that, I just started feeling weird."
Here's where it goes off the rails with an absolutely bizarre excuse.
“And if my water was spiked as if I took a muscle relaxer or something like that... my water was tampered with, bruh... this feeling right here, it was a different feeling. It’s like I had no control over my body, my legs was weak and stuff like that. But although my body was weak, my mind was very strong."
Wilder goes on to say that Breland was the only one who handled his water that night and that his trainer was part of a conspiracy for him to lose.
“Something was in my system that wasn’t supposed to be," he continued. "They plotted and planned this, and they had help too... Even when I walked into the building it felt demonic, bro. It felt weird. It felt weird... And the referee coming in the dressing room, I can feel his negative energy. This man eyes looked like he done took a cocktail drink before going into the fight. His energy felt like ‘I’m gonna do something to you, black man."
So, if you're keeping score, Wilder's own trainer wanted his fighter to lose at all cost and went as far as spiking his water. When that didn't work, he threw in the towel. Why? Because...well...uh. No, it doesn't make sense. And if all else fails, there's one more person to blame.
1) Fury's gloves were loaded
Deontay Wilder has blamed a suit, an injury and his trainer for his loss to Tyson Fury. Do you know who he hasn't blamed? Tyson Fury. But Wilder doesn't give Fury credit for stopping him. Instead, Wilder suggested in a video that he posted on Twitter that Fury's gloves were tampered with and that was the reason for his knockout loss.
"I saw in the first fight when Ricky Hatton was pulling down your gloves to put your hand in the improper position," Wilder said. "Y'all tried the same method the second time, but this time, you scratched flesh out of my ears which caused my ears to bleed. It's impossible for a brand new 10 ounce glove to bend, to keep a smushed in form or to have loose space."
🤴🏿Fury Be A Man 🖕🏿@Tyson_Fury it is time for you to be a man and honor your agreement.
— Deontay Wilder (@BronzeBomber) October 31, 2020
What is this bullshit of you fighting Carlos Takam instead of me, you got to be kidding... pic.twitter.com/qeo47CfHi4
Mind you, a member of Wilder's team was in Fury's locker room while he was getting his hands wrapped. But maybe that was another agent for Fury's team who decided to look the other way? If it sounds ridiculous, that's because it is.
"I highly believe you put something had in your glove. Something the size and the shape of an egg weight," he continued. "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 in the midst of it all, you still couldn't keep this king down. You would have had to kill me. In the end, it took a crab in the bucket referee and a disloyal trainer to throw the towel in just to stop me."
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As you can see, Deontay Wilder simply cannot accept that he was defeated by a better fighter. If it wasn't a conspiracy or a heavy suit, it was an injury or tainted water. And when that didn't work, it was an opponent who cheated with loaded gloves.
It wouldn't be so bad if it was one or two excuses, but these accusations have jumped the shark.
But we'll see what happens on October 9 and if there will be any excuses, regardless of what happens.
