The backlash Deontay Wilder has received for trying to justify the first loss of his boxing career has been worse than the actual loss.
Two days after the fight against Tyson Fury, where Wilder was defeated via TKO after his corner controversially threw in the towel, the former WBC champ told Yahoo Sports that he was at a disadvantage from the very beginning. Pointing to the 40-pound costume he wore during his walkout, which was in tribute to Black History month, Wilder said his legs were fatigued.
“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.”
Many were unimpressed with Wilder’s excuse, with ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith calling it “the most embarrassing excuse that I have ever heard for a guy losing the fight.”
Somehow things escalated when an old video of Wilder resurfaced from the depths of the internet.
A clip of the 34-year-old heavyweight began to circulate in which he talks on the Joe Rogan podcast about how he wears similarly weighted vests in training to prepare him for fights.
“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.”
There was also footage posted weeks before the fight from BT Sport of Wilder clearly wearing a weighted vest during his training.
Dillian Whyte, a fellow heavyweight contender, posted the footage to his 279.4K followers on Twitter Wednesday and called Wilder a “lying coward.” Whyte also went off in an interview with Sky Sports on Tuesday, saying, “It just shows how much rubbish the guy talks, how deluded he is. How can an outfit wear your legs down? That’s crazy.”