DEONTAY WILDER has broken his silence. He’s barely made any public statements since Tyson Fury overwhelmed him earlier this year. He failed to agree to a third fight with Fury, allowing the WBC heavyweight champion to move on and look for a new opponent.
Seemingly too little to late, Wilder took to social media on
Saturday to say to Fury: “It is time for you to be a man and honour your
agreement. What is this bulls**t of you fighting Carlos Takam instead of me,
you got to be kidding… When you were going through your darkest time, I told
you that if you got yourself together I would give you a title shot. Being a
man of my word, I gave you the title shot.
“When that fight was a draw, I told you that I would give you a rematch. You know I was offered more money to fight [Anthony] Joshua than I was getting to fight you. Again being a man of my word, I fought you like I said I would.”
Interesting to note that here Wilder appears to confirm he chose to fight Fury rather than Anthony Joshua. Eddie Hearn, Joshua’s promoter, picked up on that, wryly pointing out: “I thought [you said] AJ ducked you?”
In his message to Fury, Wilder continued, “In the rematch agreement, there was a rematch clause. Now it is time for you to be a man and honour your word, instead of trying to weasel out of our agreement. Scared people run.”
It’s hard to give too much credence to the thought that Fury is avoiding Wilder, so convincing was Tyson’s victory in February.
In a bizarre video to accompany his tweets Wilder made unfounded claims that Fury had somehow tampered with his gloves – there is no evidence to support this – and then blamed his defeat on his trainer Mark Breland for pulling him out of the fight after seven rounds, branding him “disloyal”. This too is wildly unfair. In reality Breland did Wilder a great service, saving him from taking too much punishment. That is exactly what a good trainer ought to do.
Scored with gentle piano music, for some reason, Wilder finished the video by saying, “Payback is coming.” That seems unlikely. This video and his comments seemed more like a face-saving exercise than an effective means of setting up a Fury trilogy.