Heavyweight contender Dillian Whyte has ridiculed Deontay Wilder’s claim that the weight of his extravagant ring walk outfit weakened his legs and led to his loss to Tyson Fury in Las Vegas on Saturday night.
Wilder lost his WBC heavyweight crown to Fury by seventh-round stoppage after being dropped twice during the fight.
“Your outfit, you try it on before the fight. For that kind of outfit, you need at least three, four fittings. You’re telling me, somewhere between those three, four fittings, he didn’t think ‘uh, this is a bit heavy, it might affect my legs’,” Whyte 27-1 (18) told Sky Sports News.
“He just talks crap. It’s the same weight as a backpack. I think in the army, the backpack they carry is 60 or 70 kilos or something and those guys march in a backpack for days and they are half the size of him.
“It just shows you how much rubbish the guy talks. How deluded he is. How can an outfit wear your legs down? He should do what Tyson done, make someone take him to the ring.”
Whyte, who has had a running feud with Wilder dating back years, says he is still prepared to face the 34-year-old American with or without a world title belt on the line.
“I’m disappointed, but I will still fight the guy,” he said. “I’ve waited so long to fight the guy. I’ve been chasing him for so long and he’s such a coward.
“I’ll still fight him. Belt or no belt. It’s more than the belt with him.
“He didn’t want to give me the shot when he was champion, so he might give me a shot now he’s not champion.
“It is disappointing, because Tyson Fury did what I’ve been saying I could do to him and did it, not exactly the way I would have done it, because I’d have knocked him out.
“If I’d had him hurt, I would have had a proper shootout with him, and I would have knocked him out. Tyson stopped him in good fashion on his feet, but I would have stopped him on the floor.”
Earlier this week the 31-year-old south Londoner gave his assessment of Wilder’s effort against Fury.
“This is why Deontay Wilder didn’t want to fight me all this time, because he just knew I would beat him,” said Whyte to Sky Sports News.
“Fury can knock him over with a body punch. What would I do to him, if I landed body punches on him? I knew the way to beat Deontay.
“You’ve got to get him on the back foot, you’ve got to get him thinking and trying to use his brain, because from a boxing standpoint, he hasn’t got a brain to use. His boxing skills are terrible. If you can evade his power punches and back him up, then he doesn’t know what to do, he gets lost, and that’s what I’ve been saying all this time.
“He put on extra weight, but his body was still small. Fury basically tickled him to the body and knocked him off his feet. Imagine if I give him a full power body punch.
“To be honest, I never expected Tyson to be so aggressive early. I thought he would have worked his way into it a bit. It was the perfect gameplan.
“I think they should have stopped the fight from earlier. He took too much punishment.
“I was happy. He got destroyed and now he’s going to make excuses about my legs were this, my legs were that. No, you got bashed up. You got proper beaten up. What happened to him is worse than getting knocked out. He got beat up properly.”
