Heavyweight boxing champ Deontay Wilder says he’s still “trying to get me a body on my record.”
Deontay Wilder faces Dominic Breazeale this weekend as he looks to defend his WBC heavyweight title, and their pre-fight smack talk seems to have gone a bit too dark. According to the boxing champ, he’s literally looking to end Breazeale’s life and add “a body” to his professional record.
“Hey, Dominic Breazeale asked for this,” Wilder told the assembled media. “I didn’t go seek him, he (sought) me so if (death) comes, it comes. This is a brutal sport. This is not a gentleman’s sport. I keep saying this is not a gentleman’s sport. We don’t ask to hit each other in the face but we (do) anyway.
“And if you can ask any doctor in the world, he’ll tell you the head is not meant to be hit. Anybody can go, and in this particular time we have bad blood against each other,” Wilder said.
“This is the only sport where you can kill a man and get paid for it at the same time. It’s legal, so why not use my right to do so?” he said. “His life is on the line for this fight and I do mean his life. I’m still trying to get me a body on my record.”
Deontay Wilder on wanting to kill an opponent: “This is the only sport where you can kill a man and get paid for it at the same time…so why not use my right to do so?” #WilderBreazeale pic.twitter.com/Li5bcSdHEn
— Ryan Songalia (@ryansongalia) May 15, 2019
In a sport that already has countless traumatic brain injuries and deaths, Breazeale says that Wilder’s statements just went too far.
“I’m super upset,” Breazeale told CBS Sports. “You never want to hear an individual — and I don’t care what sport it is but especially in the sport of boxing — who has the ability to put someone else in a bad state of mind or hurt them physically (talk like that). I don’t think he understands what he’s saying. He’s just not all there, if that makes sense.
“Both he and I have knocked out individuals with shots where I am like, ‘Oh God, I hope he is going to be OK from this.’ But that’s just my ring gentleman-ship and having a care for life,” he said.
“There is no way you can get behind a heavyweight champ who wants to put harm on another individual or take another man’s life or put them in a coma,” Breazeale said. “That just doesn’t make any sense and that’s not the barbaric state of mind that any champion should be in.”