WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder made some media rounds today, stopping by ESPN’s First Take to discuss this weekend’s fight against Dominic Breazeale. Check out what Wilder had to say...
Wilder on Breazeale being motivated by their hotel confrontation, seeing this as a chance to get revenge against him:
“I mean, first of all, Breazeale, all that story he made up is lies. You know, he came to my city and he threatened my brother as well as my family. I don’t take threats lightly. You know, he don’t say that part, he don’t own up to that part.
“He said I came into the hotel with 20 goons. I don’t have 20 people around me, my entourage is very small. You can’t control people like that, you know? With the situation up in there, he talking about his wife and kids....if you wanna get attention, you wanna clout chase, you add women and children in there.
“See him and his wife was running around the room. His wife was Xena the Warrior Princess running around yelling. His children — they don’t even know where their kids was because my brothers was protecting them like they was my own. Breazeale is just an opportunist. He’s one of those types of people that will waste water and ice in your business and slip on it on purpose just to sue you. And, you know, I don’t take that lightly. I can’t wait for Saturday night. It’s gonna be a massacre.
“I’ve always talked about wanting something on my record, wanting a body on my record, and in boxing you get the opportunity to do what you gotta do and get paid for it. That’s what I love about it. So I appreciate him for stirring the peace [note: he probably means ‘stirring the pot’]. I’m a peaceful person. I come in peace until you disturb my peace, and when you do that all hell breaks loose.”
On what he means by saying he ‘wants a body on his record’ [as if we don’t understand already]:
“I mean, what’s understood don’t have to be explained. I don’t have to go no further with that situation. But on Saturday night on Showtime at the Barclays Center you’ll see what I’m talking about.”
On having a reputation for responding to provocation disproportionately, often viewed as classless behavior:
“I’m a peaceful person. I come in love, until you interfere and you disturb the peace. And then, like I said, I bring another side of me out. I don’t like to turn into the other side of me, you know, I like to keep in the ring as the ‘Bronze Bomber.’ Like I said, on the outside of the ring I’m Deontay, but inside the ring I’m the ‘Bronze Bomber.’ It’s two different things. Two different mindsets. And when you cross that level, when you cross that line, you don’t wanna mess with me.”
On Tyson Fury saying he’s willing to fight him again as well as Anthony Joshua, and that he’d beat them both no matter how many times they fight:
“I couldn’t hear nothing he said but, you know, at the end of the day in that fight I gave Tyson Fury a concussion. Also I gave him memory loss. When a man don’t know how he got on the ground, nor do he know how he got up, that’s a problem. And if he feel like he beat me in a wide margin as he say he did, why not take a rematch? That’s easy because the second time around you know your opponent very well than the first time. It’s easy.
“But he knows the truth, I know the truth, and his team knows the truth — that they don’t wanna come in the ring with me again because I knocked his marbles outta his head.”
On it perhaps being a wise business move for Fury to first seek a fight against Anthony Joshua before rematching him:
“If it’s like that then state it as that. You know what I mean? But it’s not that case because look who he’s fighting, #63 in the rankings, and then after that he’s gonna fight another low opposition. He had the contract [for the rematch] on the table for five days to a week, they didn’t wanna take it. I don’t wanna hear about the ESPN deal or the Top Rank deal and all that stuff. When you think you can beat a man, you go take my title! And then when you fight Joshua you be the undisputed unified heavyweight champion of the world, not the other way around, baby.”