Photo by JOHN GURZINSKI/AFP via Getty Images
Referee Kenny Bayless says he was very close to stopping Deontay Wilder against Tyson Fury.
Had Deontay Wilder’s corner not thrown in the towel against Tyson Fury on Saturday, referee Kenny Bayless likely would have stopped the fight anyway.
Speaking to The Metro in a recent interview, the veteran referee said he warned Wilder that he was going to stop the fight if ‘The Gypsy King’ continued to have his way with him.
“I looked him in the face and I gave him the line that us referees give the fighters to let them know, ‘hey, you’ve gotta show me something.’ They know that if you go back out there and you don’t show me something, then I might have to do my job and stop it. Deontay is a warrior, when I saw the towel come in out of the corner of my eyes and stopped it, Deontay’s first response was, ‘Why did I stop it?’ ‘Then I let him know it was his corner that stopped it, but I was very close to stopping it.”
Fury imposed his will on Wilder from the opening bell, dropping ‘The Bronze Bomber’ in the third, and then the fifth, before Wilder’s corner threw in the towel in the seventh. Bayless had some initial concerns about the bleeding from Wilder’s ear but says the doctor assured him that it was only a minor injury.
“I thought that the blood was coming from the inside of the ear,’ said Bayless. ‘At the end of the round when I went over to check, the doctor was already in the ring while I was picking up the scorecard.
“The doctor looked at me and said, ‘He’s all right.’ So, at that point I left it alone. ‘It wasn’t until after the fight that the doctor said Deontay wears those things in his earlobes, those rings, apparently that lobe got cut and it was the lobe that was bleeding, not the eardrum.”
Wilder has called for an immediate rematch with Fury and blamed his loss on the extravagant 45-pound costume he wore to the ring.
“My uniform was way too heavy for me. I didn’t have no legs from the beginning of the fight. In the third round, my legs were just shot all the way through. But I’m a warrior. and people know that I’m a warrior. It could easily be told that I didn’t have legs or anything. A lot of people were telling me, ‘It looked like something was wrong with you.’ Something was, but when you’re in the ring, you have to bluff a lot of things. I tried my best to do so. I knew I didn’t have the legs because of my uniform.”