Morning Report: Deontay Wilder to rematch Tyson Fury, blames loss on 40-pound walkout costume

MMAfighting.com

Last weekend, the UFC held an event in Auckland, New Zealand where the main event fight between Paul Felder and Dan Hooker ended up being an early Fight of the Year candidate. But despite the excellent weekend for MMA, the biggest story in combat sports was Tyson Fury reclaiming the lineal heavyweight title with a seventh-round TKO of Deontay Wilder.

In one of the biggest boxing matches of the year, Fury dominated, beating the WBC heavyweight champion from pillar to post and making the feared KO artist look slow, unsure, and completely out of his element. It was a one-sided beatdown that had many analysts predicting Wilder would forego his option for an automatic rematch. Instead, Wilder is going the other direction, and doing the most MMA thing imaginable: exercising his right to an automatic rematch with Fury and blaming his loss on the clothes he was wearing.

Speaking with Yahoo Sports, Wilder claimed that the Fury never actually hurt him in the fight but that he was unable to compete to the best of his abilities due to wearing an enormous, metal-adorned costume during his grand entrance that weighed over 40 pounds and sapped his strength from him before the bout was even started.

“He didn’t hurt me at all, but the simple fact is … that my uniform was way too heavy for me,” Wilder tsaid. “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.

“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. 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.”

Fury knocked Wilder down in both the third and fifth rounds of the fight before Wilder’s corner threw in the towel in the seventh round, a decision which Wilder is still upset with his corner for.

“I am upset with Mark [Breland, Wilder’s coach] for the simple fact that we’ve talked about this many times and it’s not emotional,” Wilder said. “It is not an emotional thing, it’s a principal thing. We’ve talked about this situation many, many years before this even happened. I said as a warrior, as a champion, as a leader, as a ruler, I want to go out on my shield. If I’m talking about going in and killing a man, I respect the same way. I abide by the same principal of receiving.

“So I told my team to never, ever, no matter what it may look like, to never throw the towel in with me because I’m a special kind. I still had five rounds left. No matter what it looked like, I was still in the fight. I understand he was looking out for me and trying to do what he felt was right, but this is my life and my career and he has to accept my wishes.”