Deontay Wilder doesn't have heart, he has a fragile ego

In the aftermath of his 11th-round knockout loss to Tyson Fury for the heavyweight championship, many people are praising Deontay Wilder’s heart. They’re saying he proved that heart by standing in front of Fury and taking punishment, throwing punches, and refusing to back down.

No one can question that Wilder showed determination.

But heart is something different. Heart is bigger than just simple force of will. It encompasses things like compassion, empathy, and humility — qualities Wilder has shown precious little of both before and after the fight.

Every fighter steps into the ring believing he has what it takes to win. He thinks he’s better than the other guy, and he’s just itching for the chance to prove it. But Wilder was different. He seemed to believe that proving it didn’t matter, and that if he couldn’t prove it, he still wouldn’t accept it.

He couldn’t and wouldn’t believe there might be someone better than he was.

That was his conceit and his folly.

Denying reality

The most feared puncher in the division knocked Fury down four times, but Fury knocked him down five (and it might have been more if his corner hadn’t thrown in the towel for the second fight). In Wilder’s mind, that simply didn’t compute, so there had to be something else going on. People had to be cheating or conspiring against him.

The comically self-indulgent mask he wore into the ring before the second fight was supposedly so heavy (40 pounds) it weakened his legs. Fury must have used “loaded gloves.” His own cornerman, Mark Breland, must have spiked his water. Oh, and Breland cost him the fight by throwing in the towel during the second fight when he was being beaten to a pulp.

No one threw in the towel during the third fight, and Wilder was knocked out in the 11th round. Fury was leading on all three judges’ scorecards at the time.

Yet he still refused to believe he’d lost fair and square.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said, as though it were inexplicable that someone else could actually have outboxed and outpunched him. Wilder blamed the loss not on Fury’s boxing ability or punching power, but because he leaned on his opponent. And yes, Fury did lean on Wilder and use his weight to his advantage.

But that’s part of the game — and it’s only one aspect of why Fury won. The fact is, Fury is a complete fighter: He can jab, he can work the body, he can throw with either hand, he can slip punches, and he can get up off the canvas when he’s down. Wilder, on the other hand is a fairly one-dimensional fighter. He relies on his right hand to knock opponents out, and when he can’t, he either doesn’t have a backup plan or lacks the skills to execute it.

Maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise, considering Wilder not only thinks he’s entitled to victories, but that he knows everything, too.

Just ask Mark Breland, the guy who got fired for having the audacity to save him from further punishment by throwing in the towel. And who got accused of drugging Wilder’s water on top of it all.

“Deontay had become untrainable because he was at the point of he know more about boxing than all of us... So a coach can only teach someone if they’re willing to learn.”

Sore loser

And since Wilder couldn’t fathom even the possibility that he’d lost legitimately, he refused to acknowledge Fury when he sought him out after the third fight to say “well done.” He said he didn’t respect him, even after he knocked him on his keister. Even though Fury had, magnanimously, said Wilder was the second-best fighter in the game, after himself – which may even be too generous.

He couldn’t accept it.

Because he is a sore loser. (Fury even, accurately, called him that.) Sore losers don’t have heart. They have a belief that they’re somehow inherently better than anyone else and can’t accept any evidence to the contrary. They’re extremely fragile, insecure people.

When they lose, they’ll blame everyone but themselves, because they can’t take the implications that they weren’t good enough. They’d rather play the victim than the sportsman. Look at our previous president: He refused to accept the results of an election that he lost by 7 million votes because his fragile ego couldn’t take it.

In a way, Wilder’s refusal to accept defeat after his third fight with Fury was even worse: He did so after getting knocked flat on the canvas. There were no votes to count, no scorecards to consult. He was simply, and definitively, flattened.

When he fought Tyson Fury for the third time, Deontay Wilder showed guts and he showed determination. But those things do not equal heart. Heartless people have them, too. So do people with fragile egos who play the victim to avoid admitting they lost to the better fighter.

That’s what Deontay Wilder did.

Respect? He doesn’t deserve it.

Stephen H. Provost spent more than 30 years as a journalist covering sports, politics, and other issues at daily newspapers. He is the author of books on these and a range of other topics, all of which are available on Amazon.