Deontay Wilder’s head trainer Malik Scott believes the rumours that Tyson Fury was getting busted up in sparring, prior to the cancellation of the heavyweights’ trilogy fight earlier this month.
WBC champion Fury withdrew after apparently testing positive for Covid-19, with his third meeting with Wilder bumped from July 24 to a new date of October 9 in Las Vegas.
Shortly after the fight’s rescheduling, rumours began to surface of Fury being roughed up and floored in sparring. Scott, who will debut as Wilder’s head trainer in October’s rearranged bout following the dismissal of former coach Mark Breland, gives credibility to these rumours, but equally maintains that sparring mishaps are part of heavyweight boxing.
“When you hear those kinds of rumours with this type of high calibre fight, those are not rumours, those are facts. Those so-called rumours came from legitimate sources,” Scott told ‘The PBC Podcast’.
“To [Fury’s] credit, I’m not even big on that. He had Jared Anderson in camp with him, he had Efe [Ajagba] in camp with him, he had Christian [Thun] in camp with him. When I see all those [undefeated] guys he was in camp with, I knew for sure he was getting touched up. I would hope that’s why he was bringing them in, so that he can fight them off and not get touched up, because that’s what you do when you’re trying to prepare for the likes of Deontay Wilder. So, it’s not shocking. Is it bragging rights to me, or anything like that? Not really. Lots of guys get touched up in sparring. That’s nothing.
“But the thing is when you get discouraged from that, when that can lead you to cancelling the fight, when that can lead you to having demonic nightmares of you fighting Wilder after getting touched up by guys you were sparring — to me that’s where the problem is. The problem is getting discouraged by the bad days in the gym and wanting to quote-unquote ‘postpone the fight’ and cancel the fight.
“[But] Mike Tyson has been knocked down in sparring, Lennox Lewis has been hurt in sparring. Like, you know what I’m trying to say? It comes with what we do. He brought a bunch of undefeated guys to his camp. Guys probably got the best of him. I heard that Jared Anderson had him out on his feet. I heard one guy knocked him down.”
Main image: Deontay Wilder and Malik Scott (right). Photo: Sean Ham/TGB Promotions.