Deontay Wilder has reignited his feud with Tyson Fury by raising concerns about his opponent’s gloves hours before their trilogy fight.
Wilder was previously critical of Fury’s gloves when The Gypsy King beat him in February 2020 and he is adamant that he will be at a disadvantage again.
On this occasion, as Fury prepares to put his WBC belt on the line in Las Vegas, Wilder expressed his feelings of discontent about the horse hair that is used as padding inside Fury’s gloves.
Deontay Wilder has again raised concerns regarding his opponent Tyson Fury’s gloves
Wilder is concerned about the horse hair that is being used as padding in Fury’s gloves
Ahead of the fight, Wilder claimed that Fury’s gloves don’t have sufficient padding and questioned the use of horse hair
NASC officials inspected both fighters’ gloves and deemed that they could be used
Wilder believes that he will again be at a disadvantage in the fight due to Fury’s gloves
Wilder is adamant that Fury’s gloves don’t have sufficient padding.
Nevada State Athletic Commission (NASC) officials confirmed that Fury’s gloves are permitted to be used.
Both Wilder and Fury have been given four sets of gloves for the fight, but NASC officials cut open one glove from each set in order to check the padding.
Wilder stated that he will switch to a pair of Everlast MX gloves so that he is on a ‘fair playing ground.’
Wilder told 78SportsTV: ‘We had a little situation with the gloves.
‘I already got word of some funny stuff going on in the back of the gloves.
‘When I got into the room I immediately asked about the gloves and was telling them about certain things that happened in the first event with his gloves being funny, how they were bending and folding, even showing certain clips of it.
‘They [NASC officials] said they’ve been around boxing 25, 30 years, everybody feels since they’ve been around it they are some type of expert.’
Wilder questioned the decision that the officials made due to their lack of boxing experience.
He continued: ‘But if you haven’t put a glove on and hit someone in the face to understand what type of damage it could do, or how mechanically a glove can work, it’s 25, 30 years down the toilet.
‘You can cut open a glove all day and look inside and still not know what’s going on.’
Wilder questioned the decision that the officials made regarding Fury’s gloves due to their lack of boxing experience
Wilder added that he thought the the use of horse hair in gloves was illegal.
He said: ‘What happened was Fury’s glove that he’s chosen, which is the same thing he had last time, had little to no padding. The rest of it was horse hair, we thought horse hair was illegal and out of the question but they said it was [okay], so we said cool.
‘They opened up my glove and my glove padding is at least two to three inches thick. His glove looks like they’ve already been used, already folded, bended, like they’ve been thrown in the trash and got back out and say, ‘we’re gonna reuse these’.
‘My argument was that this is not enough padding in these gloves. They [NASC officials] were trying to convince me the horse hair in the gloves makes up for everything because the horse hair is actually harder than the foam.
‘I was telling them they were wrong because the thing about the horse hair is that over time the horse hair can spread, and if it spreads the horse hair gets thinner, that way you only feel that small padding that’s under the horse hair.’
Wilder said he will switch to a pair of Everlast MX gloves so that he is on a ‘fair playing ground’
Wilder says that he attempted to explain the situation to the NSAC official and eventually made the decision to switch to wearing his Everlast MX.
He said: ‘The man [the NASC official] tried to go on and explain the lining [on the glove] means it [the horse hair] can’t go anywhere. Of course it can’t go down but it can go left to right in the pad. I started to explain to him of course it can’t go down but it can go left to right. You can just put your hands together and the horse hair will start to expand [separate], so now you’ll just have a fist [in your glove], a top secret weapon.
‘I was trying to educate him [the NASC official] on it. One of the guys was trying to say the gloves bend at a 90 degree angle. I had to take my glasses off and look at him so they knew I was real.
‘As I started explaining more and we got into it more they said, ‘if you want to be on the same playing field you can wear the same gloves or get another selection of gloves’. I said, ‘okay, let me get my [Everlast] MX’.
‘Everybody knows about the MX, those are puncher’s gloves, when they first came out I was breaking eye socks, breaking wrists, I even broke my hand a couple of times but I think my hand wraps were too tight and I have so much power that all that force was going in one place and cracking my own hands. So I went back to my old MX to be on fair playing ground.
‘We got it all situated. We’re back at it, I’m very happy with what’s going on with the gloves. Since they want little to no padding in the gloves, we’re going to have the same thing and may the best man win.’
After their previous fight last year, Wilder said Fury had ‘something the size and the shape of an egg-weight’ in his glove
Speaking in October 2020, Wilder said that Fury had ‘something the size and the shape of an egg-weight’ in his glove in their second fight.
Wilder also stated that in the first meeting between them in December 2018, which ended in a draw, Ricky Hatton (who was in Fury’s corner) pulled down Fury’s gloves in order to put his fist in an improper position.
Wilder said: ‘I saw in the first fight when Ricky Hatton was pulling down your gloves to put your fist in the improper position.
‘You tried the same method the second time but this time you scratched flesh out of my ears which caused them to bleed.’
‘It’s impossible for a brand new 10oz glove to bend, to keep a smushed-in form or to have loose space. I highly believe you had something hard in your glove, something the size and the shape of an egg-weight. It’s the reason why the side of my face swelled up in an egg-weight form. And it left a dent in my face as well.’
‘But in the midst of it all, you still couldn’t keep this king down. You would have had to kill me. In the end it took a c***-in-a-bucket referee and a disloyal trainer (Mark Breland) to throw the towel in just to stop me.’