![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Deontay_Wilder_vs_Tyson_Fury_timber-1000x600-300x180.jpg\")
<\/a>By Randy \u201cThe Commish\u201d Gordon<\/strong><\/p>\nDeontay,<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n This is a letter I started to write to you on the early-morning flight from Las Vegas to New York\u2019s JFK International Airport last February 23. Only hours earlier, I was ringside with Gerry Cooney for your fight against Tyson Fury. I completed the letter, closed my laptop, and planned on sending it to you after I returned home. I never got to send it. By the time I got home, I read your post-fight remarks about how furious you were at Mark Breland for throwing in the towel and at referee Kenny Bayless for stopping the fight. Deontay, Breland was right. So was Bayless. You just didn\u2019t want to believe what they did was the right thing.<\/p>\n I get it. The loss was a devastating blow to you. You lost, not just your undefeated record and your title, you lost your aura of invincibility that night. <\/p>\n Cooney and I didn\u2019t hang around for the post-fight press conference. It was late, and each of us had very early flights back to the East Coast. Cooney\u2019s was earlier than mine. In fact, both of our flights were so early that it would still be dark when we left the MGM. So, we decided not to wait for the post-fight press conference, which often doesn\u2019t start for almost an hour\u2014or more\u2014after the fight.<\/p>\n As we headed back to our respective rooms, I said to Cooney, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t want to be in Wilder\u2019s dressing room right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Cooney nodded. He understood. He\u2019s felt the pain of losing in a big fight. He replied, \u201cI hope he handles this loss well. I hope he can accept it. That\u2019s going to be the tough part. Accepting it and dealing with the loss can be tougher than the fight itself.\u201d<\/p>\n We said goodnight, then headed to our rooms to pack and catch what amounted to a little more than a nap.<\/p>\n The airport was crowded with boxing fans, all getting an early jump on their Sunday. I heard many talking about the fight.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t believe Wilder had nothing,\u201d was one remark I caught.<\/p>\n \u201cI never thought Fury could do that!\u201d was another remark I heard.<\/p>\n There were a few more, but one, in particular, stood out. It was a remark I\u2019m sure you don\u2019t want to hear, something you don\u2019t want to read, something you don\u2019t want to be told. I\u2019m sure none of your \u201cYes Men,\u201d nobody in your inner circle, ever brought this up to you. The remark I heard was \u201cWilder has a great right hand, is tall and he\u2019s fast. But he doesn\u2019t know how to box. He can\u2019t even throw a jab correctly. He got where he got because of his height, his speed and his amazing right.\u201d<\/p>\n Well, I wrote my letter to you on the plane. However, when I heard you pin the blame for your loss on Breland, I pressed the \u201cDelete\u201d key.<\/p>\n That was very noble of you to say you wanted to go out on your terms, to go out on your shield. I get it. I think every fighter, every warrior, should take that attitude into the ring. That \u201cIf-you-want-to-beat-me-you\u2019ll-have-to-kill-me!\u201d attitude is a quality to be admired. However, as much as the fighter says he wants that, it\u2019s up to the referee or the fighter\u2019s corner\u2014to his Chief Second\u2014to decide when enough is enough. It\u2019s done, Deontay, so a fighter doesn\u2019t have to go out on his\u2014or her\u2014shield.<\/p>\n Joe Frazier, the warrior\u2019s warrior, was saved from himself on two occasions. The first was on January 22, 1973, in Kingston, Jamaica. Frazier was separated from his heavyweight championship that night by George Foreman, who knocked Frazier down three times in the first round and three more times in the second round before referee Arthur Mercante, SR. waved the fight over. Had the referee not saved Frazier, had this fight taken place 50 years earlier, Frazier would have kept getting up until, well, until he didn\u2019t. He said he wanted to go out on his shield. The referee would not allow that to happen.<\/p>\n On October 1, 1975, Frazier and Muhammad Ali had waged 14 rounds of the most savage heavyweight title fight in history. Ali\u2019s body was pounded severely. Most likely, any other heavyweight would have crumbled much earlier under the barrage of vicious body punches landed by the relentless Smokin\u2019 Joe. But Frazier\u2019s face was pounded raw. His eyes were swollen. One of them was shut. He couldn\u2019t see shots coming. His lips were bleeding. He was swallowing blood. Yet, Frazier wanted to continue. Both he and Ali were ready to go out on their shields. As the 15th round was about to start, even as Ali said he was thinking \u201cI am going to die,\u201d Frazier\u2019s Chief Second, Hall-of-Famer Eddie Futch, prevented both men from going out on their shields. He turned to Frazier, moments before the bell, and said, \u201cThat\u2019s all, son. That\u2019s it!\u201d He waved his hands, and it was over. Instead of acting like Joe Frazier, who showed us how to win respectfully and with class, and also how to lose graciously and with dignity, you became an excuse-maker.<\/p>\n You said you were fighting Breland, Bayless and Fury.<\/p>\n The costume you wore into the ring was too heavy.<\/p>\n You injured a bicep.<\/p>\n The gloves were tampered with.<\/p>\n You have put blame in so many places and made so many excuses for the loss, that members of the media find it difficult to show you much support. Through no fault of your own, your inactivity during this pandemic lockdown has eroded interest in a trilogy fight between you and Tyson Fury.<\/p>\n Even Fury himself has lost interest.<\/p>\n Yet, you blame Breland for causing you to become an ex-champ. You officially fired him a few weeks ago. Shame on you. It\u2019s time to listen to Michael Jackson\u2019s \u201cMan in the Mirror.\u201d<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with you. You are the boss. You are the king of your castle. You call the shots. But, every successful ruler has those around him who help keep him there. You have your disciples. You can\u2019t do it alone. Nobody can. It\u2019s something you have found out, as will everyone else who thinks they can stay at the top by listening to only themselves.<\/p>\n You have been with Jay Deas from the beginning. It\u2019s commendable you have stayed by each other\u2019s side from the beginning. However, it\u2019s been unrealistic to think either of you could do it all without adding more to your team over the years.<\/p>\n Deontay, you have some incredible attributes as a fighter. Us boxing journalists love talking and writing about them. You love talking and yelling about those strengths, as well.<\/p>\n \u201cBOMB SQUAD!\u201d For years you have told me, \u201cI am working on my shortcomings. You will see a new, improved me the next time out. Do you remember when you first told me that? I do. It was right after the Audley Harrison fight in April 2013. You stopped him in 1:10 of the first round. However, in your rush to finish him, you looked like a Golden Gloves novice heavyweight. You tossed at least a half dozen of the wildest right hands I have ever seen thrown inside a boxing ring.<\/p>\n \u201cI need work,\u201d I know that, you said. \u201cBut I\u2019m a work in progress. I am a fast learner. You\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n Your next fight was less than four months later. It was your 29th fight. Your opponent was former WBO Heavyweight Champ Sergei Liakhovich. At 37, and on a two-fight losing streak, Liakhovich was a perfect opponent. He offered you nothing. He was there to build up your record and to take home a few dollars. He did both. Well!<\/p>\n You knocked him O-U-T in the first round, leaving him twitching on the canvas. The victory gave you back-to-back first-round knockouts. In this one, there were no amateurish, roundhouse rights. That\u2019s because you didn\u2019t need several to finish the job. Liakhovich was out cold after absorbing just one monstrous right.<\/p>\n The victory over Liakhovich was televised on Showtime, and your stock rose dramatically. You were now 29-0 and rapidly-climbing in the ratings. Wladimir Klitschko was the champ, but it was just a matter of time, everyone figured, before you got to him.<\/p>\n The victory over Liakhovich not only left you at 29-0, it was also your 29th knockout. Seventeen of them were in the very first round. Eight of those were consecutive first-round KO\u2019s.<\/p>\n \u201cBOMB SQUAD!\u201d is what the boxing world kept hearing. It was new. It was refreshing. You were a charismatic heavyweight who could knock over opponents as if they were rag dolls. You were a fighter who liked to fight. You loved staying active.<\/p>\n In your first four years as a pro, you never fought less than six times a year. Then, after you took the title from Bermane Stiverne in 2015, your activity numbers feel drastically. Since 2016, you have fought just twice per year. Of course, injuries and surgeries to your biceps, elbow and hand have kept you sidelined for awhile.<\/p>\n However, from fight to fight, you showed no improvement in your skill level. You made defense after defense, with your heart, speed and massive right hand leading you to victory in all of them.<\/p>\n Then came the change. You defended your title against the avoided Luis Ortiz in March 2018. Your lack of boxing ability had you in deep trouble. Your big heart\u2014and devastating right–pulled out the victory, however.<\/p>\n Following that, you and your team blew the negotiations for a unification fight against Anthony Joshua, who had gotten to Klitschko before you did.<\/p>\n With many terrific matchups in all of boxing\u2019s weight classes, it was you against Joshua which was THE fight everyone wanted to see. Both of your camps started marinating this mouth-watering fight. However, you both got greedy. Tens of millions of dollars was not enough. You over-marinated the negotiations. Boxing history is loaded with big fights which were over-marinated. You against Joshua may have been the biggest example of what happens when a prospective mega-event is over-marinated.<\/p>\n After Joshua blasted out Alexander Povetkin in September 2018, it was thought that if you took care of business a little more than two months later against Tyson Fury, your long-marinating fight against Joshua would finally happen in 2019.<\/p>\n I was ringside for your first fight against Fury. If you remember, referee Jack Reiss invited me to join him as he gave the pre-fight instructions to both you and Fury in your respective dressing rooms. I was certain it would be the only time you\u2019d be facing Fury. That\u2019s because I didn\u2019t see him beating you\u2014or even fighting to a draw. I was wrong.<\/p>\n Though you dropped Fury twice, and though my scorecard had you slightly ahead at the final bell, my scorecard didn\u2019t count. The scorecards of Robert Tapper, Phil Edwards and Alexander Rochin did count. They called the bout a draw.<\/p>\n In the days following the fight, I was sad to see your reaction to the draw.<\/p>\n \u201cI won that fight!\u201d you insisted.<\/p>\n \u201cI won that fight!\u201d you said, over and over.<\/p>\n You said Fury was lucky to have escaped with a draw, because you had been sick all week, Not many of my boxing colleagues bought that story.\u201d<\/p>\n However, I did. I knew there had to be a reason you struggled against Fury, a man light-hitting former Cruiserweight Champion Steve Cunningham was beating and had dropped with a right hand in 2013, before Fury came back to stop him in the seventh round.<\/p>\n But when you blamed referee Jack Reiss for a slow count over Fury in the 12th round, then produced a doctored video with a time clock on it, I shook my head sadly. You see, two days after the fight, I went over the video with several producers and video experts at SiriusXM. In real time, we examined the 12th round knockdown, Reiss\u2019 handling of the knockdown, his picking up the count from the Knockdown Timekeeper and his continuation of the count was flawless. Yet, you continued to rip into Reiss\u2014one of the finest refs in the sport\u2014as if he was the reason for the draw. Reiss isn\u2019t the reason you didn\u2019t win.<\/p>\n You are the reason!<\/p>\n Your lack of boxing skills led to Fury, not only surviving upon arising from apparent oblivion, but to dishing out more than he was taking.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t blame that on Reiss. Blame that on yourself.<\/p>\n So, the draw changed your direction. No longer was a Wilder-Joshua fight the one fans wanted to see. It was Wilder-Fury II.<\/p>\n Before a rematch could happen, Fury and promoter Frank Warren joined forces with Bob Arum and his promotional organization, Top Rank. They wanted Fury to sharpen up a bit. As he was getting set to fight 6\u20195\u201d Tom Schwarz, a 24-0 heavyweight from Germany, you did some sharpening up of your own on Dominic Breazeale. One right ended Breazeale\u2019s night in 2:17 of the first round.<\/p>\n It was then tough to watch as, two weeks later, late-sub Andy Ruiz, JR. pulled off the upset of the year, knocking out Anthony Joshua in the seventh round. That could have been you\u2014should have been you\u2014knocking out Joshua.<\/p>\n Instead, you had to wait for Fury, who continued with his sharpening up. This time his promoters went from an unbeaten German to an unbeaten Swede named Otto Wallin. The Swede came close to upsetting plans even further, as he sliced up Fury\u2019s right eye and had him a punch or two away from being stopped. Fury, showing the courage he did against you, fought back valiantly and pulled out the decision over Wallin.<\/p>\n You were told that you\u2019d be getting your rematch against Fury when his right eye healed. So, you figured you\u2019d fight one more time before facing Fury again. As long as you were looking at a rematch against Fury, you figured you might as well give Luis Ortiz a rematch.<\/p>\n On November 23, 2019, that rematch happened. Going into the seventh round, all three judges had Ortiz in the lead. Two had him comfortably in the lead.<\/p>\n As you pointed out in the post-fight interview, trailing on the scorecards doesn\u2019t matter, because you have the biggest equalizer in the sport\u2014your explosive right hand. It took just one to separate Ortiz from his senses at 2:05 of the seventh round.<\/p>\n It was time to set the rematch. Soon after the knockout of Ortiz, the rematch against Fury was announced. It would take place February 22, 2020. The setting: The MGM Grand Garden Arena.<\/p>\n \u201cBOMB SQUAD!\u201d is what we heard over and over in the buildup to the fight.<\/p>\n Then came the rematch. Then came the decisive\u2014but not surprising\u2014victory. There has been silence from you and your camp ever since the loss.<\/p>\n Except, of course, for your myriad of excuses.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve put blame in all the wrong places. You blamed the wrong people for the loss. Obviously, you can\u2019t fire yourself. But you tossed the wrong guy out of your corner.<\/p>\n It\u2019s time to open your eyes, though it may be too late. I don\u2019t think it is, though. Though 35, which years ago was thought of as being several years past a man\u2019s athletic prime, you are in marvelous condition. Maybe it\u2019s not too late to teach an old dog new tricks.<\/p>\n You need to learn many things if you want to regain the title. None of those things are as important as learning to throw the jab correctly. Mark Breland had a terrific jab in his day. He has shown many fighters how to throw it usefully and correctly. Why didn\u2019t you listen?<\/p>\n Gerry Cooney has offered to teach you how to throw the jab. So has George Foreman. So has Larry Holmes, who owned perhaps the best left jab the heavyweight division has ever seen.<\/p>\n You didn\u2019t hire any of them.<\/p>\n Why not?<\/p>\n All you did was fire Mark Breland.<\/p>\n Why?<\/p>\n You once had a real direction in your boxing career. You see seem to have lost that direction.<\/p>\n Like MJ\u2019s \u201cMan in the Mirror\u201d says:<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m starting with the man in the mirror. I\u2019m asking him to make a change. No message<\/p>\n Could have been any clearer\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Make that change!\u201d<\/p>\n Your Friend in Boxing,<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Randy<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n [si-contact-form form=’2′]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [AdSense-A] By Randy \u201cThe Commish\u201d Gordon Deontay, This is a letter I started to write to you on the early-morning flight from Las Vegas to New York\u2019s JFK International Airport last February 23. Only hours earlier, I was ringside with Gerry Cooney for your fight against Tyson Fury. I completed the letter, closed my laptop, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[24036],"class_list":["post-95446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boxing-news","tag-randys-ringside-open-letter-to-former-wbc-heavyweight-champion-deontay-wilder"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=95446"}],"version-history":[{"count":-3,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95446\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=95446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=95446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=95446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe corner is there to protect the fighter, not to watch him go out on his shield, which can, and has, happened, on far too many occasions at any moment. When a fighter is in deep water and drowning, it\u2019s up to the corner to save him. You were in that deep water. You were drowning. Mark Breland rescued you. You rewarded him by firing him.<\/p>\n
\nBut we also have known about your deficits and shortcomings for a long time. A very long time. Those deficits are as much a part of your makeup as your right, your height, your speed and your big heart.<\/p>\n