Deontay Wilder: I Don’t Respect “Cheater” Luis Ortiz

by David P. Greisman

Deontay Wilder will have an eye on the Dec. 19 fight between heavyweights Bryant Jennings and Luis Ortiz. But no matter who wins, he already knows how he feels about Ortiz.

“I don’t respect him. He’s a cheater,” Wilder said on Dec. 5 while speaking at Barclays Center to media who had assembled for that night’s fight between Daniel Jacobs and Peter Quillin.

Ortiz came up positive for the banned steroid nandrolone in testing done for his Sept. 11 bout with Lateef Kayode, a fight Ortiz had won by first-round stoppage but was subsequently overturned into a no contest. The Nevada Athletic Commission later fined and suspended him. He came back in June with a knockout of Byron Polley and then made short work of Matias Vidondo in October.

Wilder feels Ortiz never should’ve been allowed back.

“Anybody who does that need to be banned from boxing,” he said. “He’s cheating himself. I hope they test him twice as much this time.”

Wilder would be willing to undergo advanced drug testing himself.

“Most definitely. Why not? Let’s clean the sport up,” he said. “I want to earn everything I have. How can you be a man — you achieve something but you achieved it in the wrong way? … I’m willing to take anything. Piss, blood, whatever you need to do. You want some saliva? I’m comfortable with all of that because I don’t have to cheat for nothing. You going to earn it, earn it the right way.”

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