WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder is very eager to do a lot of damage when he steps in the ring with Luis Ortiz for a second time.
On Tuesday, Wilder announced that a deal was reached to face Ortiz in a rematch. The fight is being targeted for a date in September.
The announcement was a crushing below to the handlers of IBF, IBO, WBA, WBO champion Anthony Joshua.
According to Joshua and his promoter Eddie Hearn, their entire focus for next week was going to be the negotiations for a potential unification with Wilder.
But that won't happen this year.
And Wilder was 100% confident that a showdown with Joshua would never materialize in 2019.
Joshua will defend his titles on June 1, against Andy Ruiz at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
"I knew none of these major fights were going to happen this year, so why not go ahead and get Ortiz II in there?" Wilder said to The Los Angeles Times.
"This was the perfect time to finish [Ortiz] in a better fashion, and better than to wait on 'this major fight.' ... I do not trust anything that [Joshua and his team] say. And who else is fighting Ortiz? "
"The ones who hate this, I understand that because they want Wilder-Joshua. Everyone is impatient. They want what they want, but knowing I'm the most exciting heavyweight in the world, you'll still watch the [Ortiz] fight, no matter what, because I bring the drama and the pain. You know Ortiz is going to get up for this big fight. We saw it with me. Every fighter who goes against me gives it their best because they're going in there with a killer. You only get exciting fights, and that's what I want to bring to the world."
The first time around, in March 2018, Wilder stopped Ortiz in the tenth round. But Ortiz came very close to stopping Wilder in the seventh. Wilder recovered and eventually dropped Ortiz two times in the tenth for a stoppage win.
