Deontay Wilder has a message for his fellow undefeated heavyweight champion Tyson Fury: “I’m gonna beat you so bad, your own mama won’t recognize you.”
The WBC heavyweight belt holder stopped by Maxim’s offices to ramp up his war of words with longtime rival Fury, the outspoken Brit who recently ended Wladimir Klitschko’s decade-long reign as boxing’s recognized heavyweight champion. Watch the video here to see Wilder unleash some rhetorical roundhouses. Ding! Ding!
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Wilder, (35-0, 34 KOs), of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, is considered one of the sport’s most devastating punchers. But before he can attempt to re-arrange Fury’s face, he’ll have to defend his title against tough Polish southpaw Artur Szpilka on January 16th in a Showtime-televised card at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
There’s also the matter of Wilder’s mandatory defense against Russian contender Alexander Povetkin. But if Fury (25-0, 18 KOs) beats Klitschko in their expected re-match, and Wilder remains undefeated, the winner of Wilder-Fury would rule the heavyweight division.
Wilder says he wasn’t impressed by Fury’s shocking November 28th upset of Klitschko in Dusseldorf, Germany. The bigger, younger, more aggressive Fury, 27, certainly deserved his unanimous decision victory over the alarmingly tentative Klitschko, 39, who had gone 11 years without a loss. But neither fighter looked especially good during the plodding, 12-round battle.
“It was the most boring fight in heavyweight championship history,” Wilder says. “Klitschko was facing two guys that night: Fury and Father Time. You could tell he was thinking about throwing punches but his body wasn’t reacting; he couldn’t get off.”
“I can beat either of those guys,” he added. “My thing was always getting to Klitschko first and unifying the titles at the same time. But now I can beat the guy who beat the guy.”
Fury, meanwhile, has seemingly garnered more press attention during his brief reign than the well-mannered Klitschko did during a decade at the top of the division.
The “Gypsy King,” as he calls himself in tribute to his Irish Traveller roots, has gleefully played the part of over-the-top heel in recent weeks. He’s declared that women belong “in the kitchen or on their backs”, blasted same-sex marriage on religious grounds, and said his critics could “suck my balls.” In the run-up to the Klitschko fight, Fury wore a Batman costume to a press conference, taunted his opponent by serenading him with a Bette Midler song, and belted out Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing”, the power ballad from Armageddon, in the ring after defeating the stunned Ukrainian.
Let’s just hope that when Wilder and Fury finally face off in the ring, they’ll bring the pugilistic firepower to back up all that heavyweight smack talk.