The Wilder-Breazeale Press Conference was Another Display of Tiresome Twaddle

Many years ago, the boxing booth was a staple at carnivals and fairs. The occupant ostensibly took on all comers, but more often than not his opponent was a confederate planted in the audience.

When a booth fighter called for a volunteer, it wasn’t sufficient that someone answer the call by throwing his hat in the ring. To goad people into ponying up the price of admission — the actual affray would be held behind a partition or perhaps in a tent — it was deemed necessary to manufacture a grudge. The booth fighter might belittle the challenger by saying that in good conscience he couldn’t allow a boy to do a man’s work. The volunteer, in truth his accomplice, would reply with some choice words of his own and back and forth they would go, their rhubarb becoming increasingly more heated until it seemed as if a fight would break out before they were made to lace on the gloves.

There were no newspapermen there to dutifully transcribe the insults and share them with their readers, but these flights of bombast were boxing’s first pre-fight press conferences and after all these years nothing has changed.

A serious boxing fan seldom learns anything new at a pre-fight press conference and that was true again yesterday, March 19, at the Wilder-Breazeale presser at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. It was already common knowledge that Deontay Wilder’s team, spurned by Tyson Fury, had settled on Dominic Breazeale as Wilder’s next opponent. They will meet here on May 18 with Wilder’s heavyweight title belt at stake. It will be the “Bronze Bomber’s” ninth title defense.

If the press conference were held in my backyard, I would have been reluctant to attend. Do I want to sit there and hear the non-combatants on the dais bloviate about what a great event they have concocted and then sit there and listen to the combatants talk trash? Been there, done that, too many times that I care to remember. But the press conference was live-streamed which meant I could watch it in my pajamas in my favorite chair and, besides, I felt that I sort of had a professional obligation to take it in.

There were no surprises. Deontay Wilder, wearing a gold chain around his neck that was so thick it probably could have been used to tow a car out of ditch, said, “I hold all the keys in the heavyweight division” and that he would “massacre” Dominic Breazeale. His syntax was often mangled, an indictment of the Alabama public school system. “Pain is the name of the game in this sport,” he said, “and we all know who do’s that the best.”

Dominic Breazeale likewise said what one would have expected him to say. He referenced Wilder as a chump and a circus act.

There is some bad blood between them, obviating the need for the promoters to manufacture some.

On Feb. 25, 2017, following their respective bouts at the Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama, Wilder and Breazeale had a little fracas in the lobby of the Birmingham Westin Hotel. In Breazeale’s version, he was accosted by Wilder and about 20 Wilder supporters and blindsided by a sucker punch in front of his wife and children. Wilder begs to differ, saying his entourage was far away when he confronted Breazeale who had insulted his brother Marsellos and that no punch was ever thrown.

The reference to the incident at yesterday’s press conference brought forth the best line of the session. Asked what Wilder had said to him, the well-spoken Breazeale said, “I didn’t have an urban dictionary, so I couldn’t understand a damn thing he was saying.”

Although there would be a lot of twists and turns before Wilder and Breazeale agreed to settle their differences in the ring, a match between them became virtually inevitable. “Maybe a fight in the ring would be the best way to settle this,” wrote USA Today scribe Bob Velin in a post-fight report. “Both are 6-foot-7, both are former U.S. Olympians, and both have a high degree of athleticism. With apologies to Mills Lane, let’s get it on.”

Deontay Wilder represents the WBC but there was no mention of the organization at yesterday’s press conference. Deontay was THE heavyweight champion as if we still lived in those halcyon days when there was only one. Much was made of the fact that this event on Showtime WILL NOT be pay-per-view, a sly allusion to the $79.95 dud that was Spence-Garcia. “I’m the people’s champion,” said Wilder, “and I want to be fair to the fans.”

When the confab was over, I felt somewhat soiled as if I had enabled it by tuning in although I was thousands of miles away. I was reminded of something that Orson Welles once said; that he would never attend a debate between career politicians as it would only encourage them.

Now that I am long in the tooth I have resolved to use my time more judiciously such as reading all those books I promised myself I would read 40 years ago and still haven’t gotten around to. I hereby resolve that I will never again waste my time sitting through a pre-fight press conference.

Just don’t hold me to it.

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