Anthony Joshua politely criticized former WBC heavyweight champion, Deontay Wilder, saying that he hasn’t reacted in the right way in response to his seventh-round knockout loss to Tyson Fury earlier this year in February.
Joshua, 30, feels that the excuses that Wilder (42-1-1, 41 KOs) has made in the aftermath to attempt to explain away his loss to the 6’9″ Fury haven’t helped him.
The fans have heard the witches brew of excuses from Wilder, and they’ve formed their own view of what happened to him. Unfortunately for Wilder, very few people are buying into his reasons for why he was battered by Fury earlier this year.
Joshua says that one good thing that has come from the excuses that Wilder has made about his loss to Fury was his confession that he “ducked” the fight against him.
In a post on social media, Wilder inadvertently let slip that he was offered more money to fight Joshua but chose instead to face Fury. In other words, Wilder ducked AJ to take on Fury.
Wilder said this on social media about him taking less money to fight Fury:
“You know I was offered more money to fight Joshua than I was getting to fight you – again, being a man of my word, I fought you.”
Joshua seems happy with Wilder confessing to swerving a fight against him. After all this time, Wilder finally admitted that he didn’t want the fight with AJ.
“I’m not surprised,” Joshua said to Sky Sports News on the way Wilder has made excuses after losing to Fury.
“He is trying to express how he feels to the world. He has left it to us, the masses, to interpret it how we feel is best. How he feels today might change in a year or two years due to experiences or more understanding of the situation that he has gone through.
“He took a loss and isn’t used to it. As time goes on, he may express himself differently.
“Today? In my humble opinion, it isn’t coming across in the right way,” said Joshua in politely criticizing Wilder. The positive out of it? He told the world that he ducked and dodged me.”
Wilder is still trying to get a third fight with Fury, but it’s looking like he’ll have to wait until 2022 for that to happen. A mediator is going through the contract for the second Fury-Wilder fight to determine whether Fury must face him a third time.
Fury’s promoters believe that the contract has expired already, and they want to move on to take the lucrative match against Joshua in early 2021.
It’s business at this point. If Fury were more concerned with the sports angle, he’d give Wilder a rematch, but considering how risky that fight would be, he’s opting to try and move on.
