Wilder: Joshua Would Have Retired To Avoid Superfight

A planned superfight between Wilder and Joshua was doomed from the start, according to Wilder, because Joshua was afraid to fight him.

The zen Deontay Wilder that accepted his loss to Joseph Parker in Riyadh over the weekend is gone. The angry Wilder that we have come to know and love over the years is back.

Wilder dropped a one-sided unanimous decision to Parker at the big Day of Reckoning event in Saudi Arabia, losing all rounds on one judges’ scorecards (see the ‘highlights’ here). The match was supposed to set up a big money superfight between Wilder and Anthony Joshua. Instead, it had people wondering if “The Bronze Bomber” had lost his edge after one too many healing encounters with the psychedelic drug ayahuasca.

Initially, Wilder sounded at peace with the defeat. But in a follow-up interview he claimed Joshua only won his fight later in the night because the Wilder fight was off the table.

“They really don’t want that fight,” Wilder said in a video from 78SPORTSTV. “When I lost did you see how happy he was coming out? ‘Now I can escape.’ I broke out laughing. I made him able to perform like that. He was like, ‘I ain’t gotta fight Wilder.’”

“The rumor was he was talking about retiring if I won,” he added. “March 9th, the fight still can go on. But this is a perfect way for them to get out.”

Wilder boiled the loss down to a lack of activity.

“My timing was off because of inactivity,” Wilder said. “I’m disappointed because I know I’m a way better fighter than [Parker]. I had such a great training camp, such great sparring, and when I got in the ring everything was off, my mind and my focus was off.”

“I hurt him a few times, but certain shots I didn’t take. It was hesitation and I couldn’t understand why. He has no business beating me at all, not even on a magnificent day for him. He didn’t do nothing, he didn’t really do nothing, neither one of us really did anything.”

Anthony Joshua has echoed Deontay Wilder’s key message: a superfight can go forward on March 9th. But in the end it’s not up to them. It’s up to the Saudi promoters who are fronting the tens of millions of dollars to put the bout together.