By Keith Idec
Deontay Wilder was more than a little bit suspicious when Luis Ortiz missed their press conference last week.
Wilder swore Friday that he knew then there was more to the story than that Ortiz couldn’t get a flight out of Miami due to the weather. He suspected all along that the Cuban southpaw was busy attempting to flush performance-enhancing drugs from his system before he was tested by the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association.
VADA, which performs testing for the WBC as part of its “Clean Boxing Program,” informed all parties Thursday that Ortiz tested positive for two banned diuretics, hlorothiazide and hydrochlorothiazide, in a urine test taken September 22. An official announcement hasn’t been made, but based on VADA’s findings, Wilder (38-0, 37 KOs) isn’t expected to move forward with his WBC heavyweight title defense against Ortiz (27-0, 23 KOs, 2 NC) on November 4 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
The Cuban-born Ortiz, who tested positive for an anabolic steroid three years ago, became the third Wilder opponent within a 16-month span to get caught by VADA using a banned substance (https://www.boxingscene.com/luis-ortiz-fails-drug-test-deontay-wilder-fight-doubt--120926).
A disgusted Wilder called out Ortiz for his actions in a series of videos posted to his Instagram account Friday.
“Last night I had a stress breakdown, man,” Wilder said. “I don’t understand, bro. I don’t understand why these f***ing fighters don’t wanna fight me fair! I can’t understand to save my life. But they do all this f***ing talking. They do all this f***ing talking. Man, this is some bullsh*t. But you supposed to be ‘The Boogeyman’ of the motherf***ing division. You a bitch! That’s what you is, a straight bitch. That’s sad, man.”
Wilder doesn’t believe Ortiz used the aforementioned diuretics to control his blood pressure, either.
“And then these motherf***ers wanna sit up here and blame it on some blood pressure medicine,” Wilder continued. “My n*gga, you ain’t on no blood pressure medicine. Let’s keep it real. Keep it real to all the people. You’re not on blood pressure medicine. You was just at the hospital, putting IVs in your system, trying to flush this sh*t. That’s why you didn’t make it to the press conference [on September 20]. We was on it.
“And I keep telling these fighters, if you’re gonna take something and put something in your motherf***ing system, we gonna know. I got eyes and ears everywhere. I got friends all over the world, man. I know who’s doing it, and it’s a lot of you motherf***ing heavyweights doing it. I’m not gonna call y’all name out for various reasons. But trust me, I know. Any of these motherf***ers that got rage, that wanna act crazy, out of the rage, talk this nonsense, calling people out all the time with the rage, they on it. Trust me! I know. I’m not gonna say they names, but I gave you a hint. They on it.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.