WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder is not buying Tyson Fury's reasoning to make an unexpected trainer switch ahead of the biggest fight of his career.
Last month, Fury shocked observers when he replaced trainer Ben Davison, who worked with the heavyweight for his last five fights. Fury would later announced SugarHill Steward as his new trainer.
Davis had trainer Fury for the first bout with Wilder, which ended in a controversial twelve round split draw in December 2018.
The rematch takes place on February 22 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Wilder believes all of these changes and recent antics by Fury are being done to create post-fight excuses when he loses.
Wilder does not see Steward becoming a factor in the fight, as there isn't enough time to change Fury's habits around with one training camp.
“A lot of stuff that he’s doing is making me feel like he’s setting up an excuse for when he loses. The weight thing – I don’t wanna hear nothing about being out of shape or, ‘He didn’t have enough time to get in shape.' All these trainers around – I don’t wanna hear when I knock him out that, ‘If he had Ben it would’ve been better.’ I don’t wanna hear no excuses. I already feel like all this stuff that’s going on is going to be bent around as excuses. We’ll see what happens," Wilder told ThaBoxingVoice, according to The Mirror.
“I don’t [think there’ll be a difference with Steward]. It’s similarities to the Dominic Breazeale camp when they added Virgil [Hunter].
“When you have bad habits, it’s hard to correct. Sometimes it takes years to correct bad habits. And it takes even longer when you ain’t used to that, when you ain’t worked with that person.”