By Cassandra Cousineau for LVSportsBiz.com
It wasn’t Deontay Wilder’s night. He wanted to go out on his shield, but his assistant trainer, Mark Breland, thought differently and threw in the towel in the seventh round in Wilder’s loss to heavyweight rival Tyson Fury at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas Saturday night. It was a decision that wasn’t agreed upon by Jay Dease, Wilder’s head trainer who has been with him since his teenage years.
Visibly upset, Dease told reporters a story about a pre-fight conversation he had in the locker room when a towel was thrown in during an undercard fight. “Somebody was talking to Tyson Fury and you could see it on camera. He turned to his team and he said never! Never throw in the towel! That’s the kind a fighter Deontay is. He would never want to quit.”
Wilder was beaten up and knocked down early in the clash of the two giants of the heavyweight division, and missed the post-fight press conference because to a trip to the hospital.
Fury came forward from the opening bell, dropped Wilder with a right hand to the temple in the third round, then again let his heavy hands fly to the body in the fifth.
If ever the cliche, “having a puncher’s chance,” were true, it’s applicable to Wilder. He’s been rocked in previous fights. In the past, he had found ways to recover and eventually land his potent right hand. For instance, in their first fight, Luis Ortiz rocked Wilder with a right hook and nearly stopped him in a wild onslaught. Wilder managed to survive the final frantic 45 seconds of the round, but took a lot of damage.
Wilder recovered and scored a spectacular knockout with a right uppercut in the tenth round of that fight. But against Fury, there would be no recovery. There would be no room to land that “big hammer from Alabama” as The Bronze Bomber called his powerful punch leading up to the fight, because his corner couldn’t weather the storm with him.
To his credit, Fury was just better. Inside the packed MGM Grand Garden Arena, a crowd of 15,816 witnessed a superior performance by the best heavyweight in the world. Fury took it to Wilder early, hit him hard, and kept the fight on the inside preventing the previously unbeaten champion from getting off his most lethal punch.
Losing is the greatest teacher in combat sports. We’ll see what lessons Wilder is able to glean as a result of the first of his career. He still has a future in the divisions, but Saturday night in Las Vegas on Feb. 22 was not his night.
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