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“I know Deontay is mad at him, saying ‘I don’t know if I can have him back.’ Some day you will figure out that man did you a favor.”
Boxing heavyweight Deontay Wilder is furious with his corner for throwing in the towel during the Tyson Fury fight, but veteran MMA referee Big John McCarthy — along with just about everybody else in the combat sports community — thinks his cornermen made the right decision.
Wilder was taking a beating from Fury until coach Mark Breland had seen enough, throwing in the towel in the seventh round to stop ‘The Bronze Bomber’ from taking any further punishment.
Although Wilder isn’t happy with the result, McCarthy believes the 34-year-old will one day thank Breland for potentially saving his career.
“Mark Breland, God bless you for being a smart guy,” co-podcast host McCarthy said on a recent episode of Weighing-in (h/t BJPenn.com).
“(Wilder) is just taking damage. Is he going to win this fight? No, he’s not going to win this fight. He says, ‘I would have gone out on my shield.’ That’s great, we know you would have gone out on your shield. But you would have taken how much more damage before that moment occurred, and how much damage was that moment going to be in taking away from your ability to come back and do this again and still be good. Because you never know how much that beating is going to do to you,” he continued.
“Mark Breland did him a favor. He was not going to win that fight. That was the seventh round, he had lost every friggin round. Look, he wasn’t going to knock out Fury. He wasn’t even getting close with those shots. Fury was in complete control of that fight. I thought Mark Breland did the right thing. I know Deontay is mad at him, saying ‘I don’t know if I can have him back.’ Some day you will figure out that man did you a favor.”
Since the loss, Wilder has called for a trilogy bout with Fury (their first match-up in 2018 ended in a draw) and blamed his walkout costume for the defeat.