Mark Breland came out with a statement today in talking about how former WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder was “untrainable” after he became a big name and that he couldn’t teach him things like how to throw a jab.
Breland, who was fired by Wilder as his coach last year after lost to Tyson Fury, said on an official statement on Instagram, “I’ve had enough.” Wilder angered Breland by talking about his suspicions of him putting something in his water in coming up with a reason to explain why he was beaten by Fury so quickly last year.
Breland pulled Wilder out in the seventh round because he was getting the living daylights beaten out of him by the prominent British heavyweight.
Mark points out that Wilder was bleeding from one of his ears, and his legs were totally gone when he had the fight stopped.
He felt that Wilder had no chance of winning the fight given his physical condition, so he made the logical move of pulling him out to protect him from harm. Little did Breland that he would be fired a short time later for his decision to stop the contest.
“After Deontay became a name in boxing, new members joined the team, and it got to the point where I didn’t have my fighter’s phone number, ” said Breland in his statement on Tuesday on his Instagram site. “I haven’t spoken alone to Deontay in years.
“The things that I told Deontay to do had to be run past Jay [Deas]. Deontay had become untrainable because he was at the point of…He knows more about boxing than all of us. So teaching a correct jab was not a priority once he continued with his knockout streak,” said Breland.
If Wilder had become untrainable and if he thought that he knew more than his coach, you could say that Breland was no valued by him. Wilder had clearly fallen in love with his right-hand power, and he wasn’t showing signs of having learned new ideas to improve the way that we’ve seen from Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua.
Wilder was the same primary fighter that had turned pro after the 2008 Olympics. Yeah, Wilder captured a world title, but he did it against a flawed champion in Bermane Stiverne.
Mark Breland not having Wilder’s phone number of years is a pretty concerning circumstance, and he seems to be hinting that his role within the training team was diminished with him, the guy that was a former world-class fighter at the elite level, taking a backseat to a person that hadn’t fought as a pro.
It sounds like Breland didn’t have any input in training Wilder by the end of the 12 years of working with the former WBC champ. If Breland was marginalized, it’s unclear why. Was Wilder surrounded by a group of ‘Yes-men,’ who was doing whatever to stay in their position?
Was Breland someone seen as a competitor to other helpers or assistant coaches in the Wilder team? We don’t know if the relationship between Wilder and Breland was deteriorating for different reasons. Perhaps Wilder didn’t like the way Breland coached?
All we do know is Wilder’s boxing skills haven’t advanced the way that many thought they would after years of being a pro, and he looked lost in his two fights against Fury.
It’s hard to imagine Wilder fighting the way he did if a legendary trainer like Emanuel Steward trained him. But if what Breland says about Wilder being “untrainable,” then perhaps even someone like Steward would have no ability to improve him.
“A coach can only teach someone if they’re willing to learn,” Breland continued. “We would wait for the champion hours before he arrived at the gym, and Jay would inform us about his mood.
“If he [Wilder] had a bad day, we had to be ‘Quiet’ not to be on the receiving end of ‘his wrath’ according to Jay in an effort not to be ‘fired.’ And yeah, [Wilder] hitting the bag, jumping rope and running is not high on the list for him.
“So if he don’t feel like it, he don’t, and Jay didn’t seem to understand the importance of those things. So he would make it clear not to ask Deontay twice.
“If I tried to pull Deontay to the side to tell him what I see, Jay made it clear, ‘Don’t say nothing; you don’t want to make him mad.'”
We really don’t know what’s going on with Wilder and Breland, but it sounds like a complete nightmare. If this is how Wilder is going about his training for fights, not listening to his trainers, that explains why he looked so ill-prepared for both fights against Fury.
Surprisingly, Breland didn’t have Wilder’s phone number in the last several years, which sounds troubling. The addition of the new team members may have led to Breland’s contribution being diminished. Was Wilder being told things by the newer team members that made him sour towards his old trainer Breland?
“I’ve watched this man speak very disrespectfully, and although I’m extremely humble and calm, I’m a man first,” Breland said. “I stayed on the team because I’ve been there from the beginning, and I believed with his power and willingness to learn more, he could be a force in the sport. I never thought anything this insane could take place.”
You get the sense that Breland was very unhappy about his role with Wilder being demoted to a lesser position and not teaching him things because of the barriers that prevented that. Wilder not being open to being coached made it impossible for Breland to fix the flaws he saw in his game.
If Breland were afraid of speaking to Wilder at times because of his temper, mood swings, or the potential of being fired by him, he wouldn’t have been able to coach him in a real way. It sounds like Breland was coaching superficially, doing what he could within his limited role.
