Deontay Wilder: “I Come From the Old School of Things”

Deontay Wilder once again showed that he has missiles in his fists. The heavyweight champion of the world and probably one of the greatest punchers of all times landed two of them right onto Dominic Breazeale’s face, sending his challenger on the floor.

It was his ninth title defense.

“It was a lot of animosities, a lot of chaos a lot of bad blood that was against me and my opponent, and that was the fuel to my fire to get myself in the best shape I’ve ever been,” said Wilder (41-0-1, 40 KOs) after the match.

The way he dominated the ring in those 2:17 clearly proves that. A challenger like Breazeale (20-2, 18 KOs) with such a background isn’t just some random guy who wandered into the ring to be blasted like that. To achieve it, you had to be both motivated and extremely ready.

And Wilder was both.

Since the first bell, he was focused, confident, and pretty lethal. After a minute or so, he started pressuring Breazeale who received a few hard hits and was cornered. Somehow, he managed to get away from that position.

But there was no way for him to avoid a loss last night. A severe one. Right out of nowhere, a one-two combination struck him hard enough to finish on the canvas and to lose his balance. Until the time he got up, the referee in the ring Harvey Dock already stopped the fight, avoiding further complications and possibly a greater humiliation of Breazeale.

Though, the challenger had a bit different view on that.

“I think the ref stopped it a little early because I could hear him saying seven and eight, but that’s boxing,” he said.

With all due respect, it appears that Breazeale was wrong because in those two minutes of the fight he managed to get only two clean hits, in 10 attempts, while Wilder had 9 punches in 35 swings.

One of them exposed Breazeale’s condition to Wilder, who stated that he saw the opponent’s struggles, which only boosted his morale.

When I hit him with the right hand the first time, his body language changed,” Wilder explained. “When you’ve been in with so many guys, you can recognize body language.”

These two guys had a lot of “bad blood” as Wilder said, which goes all the way back in 2017 after one event in Birmingham, Alabama when they had a clash in the hotel. After that, the feud continued throughout the media, with both sides labeling one another with not so kind words.

After this fight all that is over. Wilder stated that he talked with Breazeale, and wished for him to go back to his family and expressed love and respect towards him. The champion said that he represents the “old school” in which you respect your opponent, and where after a fight, you congratulate your rival and continue to be friend with him.

“I come from the old school of things,” said Wilder, “Where sometimes you got to put your hands on somebody and then when a best man wins, you can hug each other, you can love each other, live to see another day.”

His plans after this event still don’t include a match with Anthony Joshua. The Brittish champion isn’t willing to split the income from the fight 50-50, which is the main condition of Wilder’s team. Also, the rematch with Tyson Fury is on hold, because the former champion decided to clash with Tom Schwarz on June 15th in Las Vegas.

For the moment, Wilder has two options. One is to have a rematch with Luis Ortiz, and the other is to face Polish fighter, Adam Kownacki.

Ortiz (31-1 26 KOs), nicknamed King Kong, suffered a knockout against Wilder in the 10th round of the match held in March last year. After that, he had two more fights in which he won.

Kownacki had 19 fights and all wins, 15 of them came by a knockout. He was watching the last night’s event in New York and stated that he is ready to take on Wilder.

“I can’t wait to get a shot at him,” said the Polish fighter.