Deontay “The Bronze Bomber” Wilder broke his silence revealing his epic loss to Tyson Fury was due to a heavy ring walk costume.
What?
The former WBC heavyweight champion spoke to Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports and Lance Pugmire of The Athletic following Saturday’s loss.
“He didn’t hurt me at all, but the simple fact is, Kevin, that my uniform was way too heavy for me,” said Wilder to Yahoo Sports. “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 came out in an elaborate costume replete with light-up eyes, a crown and heavy chain metal looking adornments.
Apparently, the entrance was inspired by Black History Month.
“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.”
Although we now know the costume contributed to Wilder’s seemingly out of the ordinary performance, the numbers tell a different tale.
All three judges had the fight in favor of Fury before the towel was thrown in. Two of the three judges gave Fury every single round, scoring it 59-52 for Fury.
According to CompuBox, Fury was the busier and more effective puncher as well. Fury out threw Wilder 267 to 141 and out-landed him 82 to 34. He had big fifth and sixth rounds where he landed 16 and 14 power punches respectively.
In their first fight back on December 1st, 2018, Fury, also out-landed Wilder 84-71 overall. The judges scored that bout 115-111 for Wilder, 114-112 for Fury and 113-113 making it a split draw.
Now that Deontay has spoken, the circumstances around his last fight will be mulled over for a while.
