Tyson Fury says he went into the second fight with Deontay Wilder expecting an absolute war of attrition — and when he didn’t get one, he went home disappointed.
Fury demolished Wilder en route to a corner stoppage in the seventh round, with The Gypsy King appearing in full control at all times. According to Fury, it was hard not to feel slightly let down by the affair.
“To be honest I was quite disappointed in the challenge that Wilder brought Because I did train for 12 rounds at any pace and put myself through hell and back for 10 weeks in the training camp,” Fury said, speaking to TalkSport.
“I prepared for the best fighter on the planet, I prepared for the most vicious puncher on the Earth that there’s ever been and I was quite disappointed because it wasn’t the challenge that I expected.”
After the contest, Wilder pointed to his heavy ring costume as the reason behind his underwhelming outing, which Fury concedes could be true. Regardless, he says, it doesn’t change the fact that Wilder didn’t force Fury to be at his best.
“Although it was a fantastic victory for myself and it was a great fight, it just did seem that Wilder maybe wasn’t himself,” Fury said. “Maybe all the excuses he made, some of them were true. Maybe his legs were sore from the costume, maybe he did have the flu, maybe he did have a broken arm or a bone in his back or whatever.
“I’m not sure, because that wasn’t the Deontay Wilder that I prepared for. That wasn’t the animal I put myself through all those hours in training for. Like I said, it would be one of my easiest fights, and it was. I believe that was one of my easiest fights apart from the early knockovers that I had and at this level you don’t usually get that sort of easy victory, with heavyweight champions of the world.
“The guy’s been heavyweight champion of the world and made 10 title defences, knocked out every single person and to go in there with me, who’s usually a boxer, counter-puncher, master-skilled boxer, and get absolutely destroyed in a few rounds.
“I trained for an absolute battle royale and I didn’t get that, so hopefully there’s a couple of fighters out there that, when I do go into training camp and I do serious training, that they will be worthy of the challenge.”
