Deontay Wilder didn’t want the towel thrown in and it turns out his head coach Jay Deas didn’t want it thrown in either.
Wilder lost his WBC heavyweight crown to Tyson Fury when the towel came in from his corner during the seventh round at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on Saturday night.
“My side threw in the towel, I was ready to go out on my shield,” Wilder said.
“I had a lot of things going on coming into this fight. I make no excuse, I wish my corner let me go out on my shield. No excuses, I will come back and be stronger.
“Even the greatest lose, that’s part of it. You take it for what it is. I had a lot of complications, we’ll come back even stronger. This is what heavyweight boxing is all about.”
Wilder was absent from the post-fight press conference, where Deas revealed it was co-trainer Mark Breland who made the call to end the fight.
“Mark threw the towel,” Deas said. “I didn’t think he should have. Deontay’s the kind of guy that’s a ‘go out on his shield’ kind of guy.
“You’ve always got to consider, also, that Deontay is a fearsome puncher, so that’s always a difficult thing, because he does always have that shot to land a big shot and turn things around.
“I’m the head coach of the team, but we do things a little bit differently. 99 percent of the time, the head coach of the team is also the guy that’s the lead in the corner.
“Ours is a little bit more like a football team, where the head coach doesn’t necessarily call the plays; you have an offensive and defensive coordinator.
“So, ours is a little bit like that. So, what happened between during the round, Mark said something about throwing the towel in, and I told him, ‘don’t do that’. I didn’t think he should do that.
“Then the fight went a little bit longer and then I saw the towel go in. So I haven’t talked to Mark about it, but we’ll talk about it and figure out what exactly happened there.”
