Wilder's bad sportsmanship

Lets give him a break..the man was emotional..his soul had just been taken..again..Dumb thing to do tho'.

 

The man should have just looked fury in the eye after that many rounds and said fair play.

But he didn't - so tough ****.

 

Its not hard to understand that Wilder hates Fury. . I think the problem is all the lies , false accusations and excuses he made to justify his hate of Fury.
He really has no reason to hate the man as much as he does.

Fury had his character and integrity dragged over the coals by Wilder's accusations yet he was still willing to throw it under the bus after the fight.

 

Be wary of imposing a certain value system on others. The idea in any sport that you can call the opponent every name under the sun & then be buddies afterwards is a bit silly. I see that all the time when Australians compete in other sports (cricket is a good example) & then they are surprised when the other side doesn't want to play along. Same deal here. It's a certain cultural value system that says you can treat another person / team like #### while competing with them but when the contest is over all is forgotten. You can't expect those who weren't brought up in such a value system to necessarily understand or have any appreciation for it.

 

But only because Fury kicked his ass. There was always a mutual respect prior to that. He always liked Fury, considered him a kindred spirit, and he said as much on multiple occasions. Sure, since the 2020 defeat, he's (ir)rationalized a way to cope with the L, and that has led him to dislike Fury, but it's all a delusion (and, deep down, he knows it).

I don't buy that Wilder hates Fury and refuses his handshake just because he talked some trash and promoted a fight. Wilder talked and promoted, too. Then he went dark, because he couldn't process the resounding defeat of February 2020; Wilder, not Fury, took this rivalry somewhere twisted and evil.

To whatever extent it irks me, it's because he's deducting glory from himself. His inability to at the very least cop to a fair and square L, congratulate his opponent (with whom he has shared thirty intimate rounds) on a great fight and accept congratulation is dominating perception of him among fight fans who otherwise would have been speaking in effusive, glowing terms about his valor and desire. It's wholly unnecessary bad will that Wilder has created, not just between himself and Fury, but between himself and the sport and the public who watch it.

 

This is a hopeful perspective that could be accurate.

 

The esteemed Mr. Velvet gets it.

 

Adversity doesn't give you character, it reveals it. This defeat has shown a bright light on Wilder's and it isn't pretty.

 

Yeah, it wasn't great, but I was still overall reasonably impressed by the way he conducted himself across the fight, he showed proper, proper guts hanging in there knowing not only that he probably couldn't win but also that he was probably going to take a lot of punishment, fair play to him.

 

Your first post, and now this one, immediately made me think of Frazier and Ali. I’m not aware of Joe ever having gotten over the demeaning way that Ali treated him during their trilogy…and who can blame Joe? Ali, for as great character as he showed in other ways (in the ring and out), revealed a despicable, childish sociopathic side that far lesser men than him would’ve been ashamed of.
I remember when Ali lit the Olympic torch in the 1996 Atlanta games, Smoking Joe was asked what he thought: “I was hoping he would fall into the fire”

 

He never would've explicitly conceded as much, but Wilder was perceptibly aware of what he was up against going into this fight, 'frightened' probably wouldn't be too big a word, but he harnessed his fears and came to win, went all-in for glory and redemption. For that, I have to momentarily come back to where I was with Wilder pre-2020 and show some love for the guy again.

It was as sincere an effort as you could hope to see from any fighter, never mind one who was unilaterally hammered in the previous bout and had scars to deal with. The performance was greatly admirable even if his lack of magnanimity is not; problem is, the latter will always tend to obscure widespread perception of the former.

 

The mouth of a fool is his undoing. His lips are his snare.