Deontay Wilder has opened up on his defeat to Joseph Parker in December, stating that he found it difficult to adjust after the long flight to Saudi Arabia.
Wilder took on Parker on the huge Day of Reckoning card in Riyadh on December 23, but it was a poor performance from the ‘Bronze Bomber’ – losing nearly every round on his way to a one-sided unanimous decision defeat.
It was his first outing in over 14 months, when he knocked out Robert Helenius in just one round back in October 2022, with that only his first action since his trilogy contest with Tyson Fury in October 2021.
It meant that Wilder had just three minutes of in-ring action in 26 months heading into the Parker fight, and he has told ESNews that inactivity, along with the travel to Saudi Arabia, played a factor in the loss.
“It was a boring fight, nothing really happened. I went right back to training the next day. He really didn’t do nothing, they just went off the little flurries or whatever. I was out the ring for nearly two years with only one round and faced someone who was consistently fighting.
“I had less than three weeks to train. I had to go 10 to 12 hours. In the training for that I had to travel two times, 20 hours of travelling. And those guys were already in Europe, they were only 2/3 hours away. I’m not complaining, I’m just saying what I had to go through.”
Wilder’s future remains unclear for now, while Parker will go up against Zhilei Zhang on the Anthony Joshua vs. Francis Ngannou card in Riyadh on March 8th.