Deontay Wilder Saying Dead Serious That He Wants To Kill A Man In The Ring Just Made Me Pee My Pants

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Frankey Campbell. Brad Rone. Martin Sanchez. Daniel Aguillon. All boxers. All dead as a result of injuries in the ring.

American heavyweight Deontay Wilder evidently wants to add another boxer to that list.

Wilder, who has 39 knockouts from his 40 fights, will defend his WBC title against Dominic Breazeale (21-1) on Saturday at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Wilder is still holding a grudge from an incident back in February 2017 when Wilder won a fight against Gerald Washington, who Breazeale had been rooting for. Wilder then claimed the Breazeale threatened his brother.

“He told my brother, and it was confirmed by other people that was around, that Breazeale made the statement that ‘I’ll kill you. If my family wasn’t here, I’d kill you and your entire family,’” Wilder said. “And I don’t take threats lightly.” [via Fox News]

It appears that time doesn’t heal all wounds, as earlier this year, Wilder told Breazeale to make “funeral arrangements.”

In an interview on Wednesday, the 33-year-old Alabama native said he’s looking to “a body” to his professional record.

He said:

“Hey, Dominic Breazeale asked for this,” Wilder told the assembled media. “I didn’t go seek him, he (sought) me so if (death) comes, it comes. This is a brutal sport. This is not a gentleman’s sport. I keep saying this is not a gentleman’s sport. We don’t ask to hit each other in the face but we (do) anyway.

“And if you can ask any doctor in the world, he’ll tell you the head is not meant to be hit. Anybody can go, and in this particular time we have bad blood against each other,” Wilder said.

“This is the only sport where you can kill a man and get paid for it at the same time. It’s legal, so why not use my right to do so?” he said. “His life is on the line for this fight and I do mean his life. I’m still trying to get me a body on my record.” [via Bloody Elbow]

In a separate interview with  USA Today, Wilder doubled down on his desire to catch a body in the ring, legally of course.

“If he dies, he dies,” Wilder said of Breazeale. “This is boxing. This is not a gentleman’s sport. This is a gladiator’s sport. And with bad blood, we know I possess the power.”

In an interview with CBS Sports, Breazeale responded to Wilder’s aggressive comments and seems pretty shook up about it.

“I’m super upset. You never want to hear an individual — and I don’t care what sport it is but especially in the sport of boxing — who has the ability to put someone else in a bad state of mind or hurt them physically (talk like that). I don’t think he understands what he’s saying. He’s just not all there, if that makes sense.

“Both he and I have knocked out individuals with shots where I am like, ‘Oh God, I hope he is going to be OK from this.’ But that’s just my ring gentleman-ship and having a care for life,” he said.

“There is no way you can get behind a heavyweight champ who wants to put harm on another individual or take another man’s life or put them in a coma,” Breazeale said. “That just doesn’t make any sense and that’s not the barbaric state of mind that any champion should be in.”

This fight has just become appointment television.

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Matt’s love of writing was born during a sixth grade assembly when it was announced that his essay titled “Why Drugs Are Bad” had taken first prize in D.A.R.E.’s grade-wide contest. The anti-drug people gave him a $50 savings bond for his brave contribution to crime-fighting, and upon the bond’s maturity 10 years later, he used it to buy his very first bag of marijuana.