By Scott Gilfoid: Deontay Wilder says he’s going to use his special MMX punchers gloves with very little padding in them so that he can be on an even playing field with Tyson Fury’s horsehair gloves, which he says have almost no padding for tonights’ trilogy in Las Vegas/
During Friday’s glove inspection, talented former WBC heavyweight champion Wilder (42-1-1, 41 KOs) showed the inspectors videos and pictures of Fury’s gloves bending & folding during his last fight with him.
As it turns out, Fury’s gloves are made of horsehair, which has very little padding, says Wilder. That padding can move away from the knuckle area during fights claims Wilder, and he doesn’t like the idea of getting hit with Fury’s bare-knuckles during the fight tonight.
According to Wilder, he was told by the inspectors that he could wear the same horsehair gloves, but he says he’s going to use his MMX puncher’s gloves, which have very little padding as well.
Wilder using his thinly padded gloves for Fury
Wilder says when he was using the MMX gloves in the past, he was breaking eyesockets and hurting his opponents with them.
It’s unclear why he stopped using them, but it’s possible his hand problems caused him to veer away from their use. But for tonight’s fight, Wilder is going to pull out the full artillery so he can match Fury’s gloves with the padding.
“Some funny stuff was going on in the back with the gloves,” said Wilder to 78SPORTSTV about last Friday’s glove inspection.
“So when I got in the room and I was immediately asking about the gloves and I was telling them about certain things that happened in the first event about how it was bending and folding.
“I even showed videos and clips of it. What happened was Fury’s gloves that he chosen, which were the same thing as last time, he had little to no padding.
“It was this small of padding. It had little to no padding in it and the rest of it was horsehair. We thought horsehair was illegal but they said it was, so we said, ‘Cool.’
“Then they opened up my padding in my gloves, and my gloves had at least two to three inches thick. His gloves looked like they’d been used like the ones you seen on the screen right here.
“They looked like they’d been folded and bent. They looked like they’d been thrown in the trash and got back out and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to reuse these. They’re recyclable.’
“My argument was, ‘This isn’t enough padding in these gloves,‘ and they were trying to convince me that the horsehair in the gloves makes up for everything.
“The horsehair is actually harder than the foam and I was telling them that they’re wrong. The thing about horsehair is that over time, the horsehair can spread, and if the horsehair spreads, it can get thinner. So then that way you only feel the small padding under the horsehair.
Deontay using his MMX gloves
“They said if you want to be on the same playing field, you can get the same gloves. I said, ‘Okay.’ I said let me get my MMX’s. If anyone knows about the MMX’s, those are puncher’s gloves,” said Wilder.
“When they first came out, I was breaking eyesockets, I was breaking wrists and I was doing a whole lot of other things to fighters. I even broke my hand a couple of times. So I went back to my old MMXs to be on a fair playing ground. So we got it all situated.
“I’m really happy with what’s going on with the gloves. Since they want to have little or no padding in their gloves, we’re going to have the same thing, and may the best man win,” said Wilder.
“This is what we should have done the first time because my gloves had a hell of a lot of padding in them, and he used these same gloves and it had little to no padding in it at all.
“It’s amazing that they allow him to fight in those gloves at all, and we didn’t check the gloves. This time around, we’re not leaving any stones unturned,” said Deontay.
This could be bad for Fury if Wilder’s MMX gloves have as little padding as he suggests. Trying to imagine Fury getting hit over and over with MMX gloves with almost no padding, it could be over quickly tonight.