Deontay Wilder Walkout Triggers Simon Jordan Rebuke

Jordan sensed pushback the moment the subject landed. “He didn’t want to talk about it, so my initial reaction was ‘Well, you are going to’, which to some extent could be considered provocative, because if I were in his shoes, I would have probably said ‘No, I’m not’, and that is what he said.”

The exchange drifted away from boxing soon after. “It then escalated from there, and he wanted to make it about something completely different. He wanted to make it about a race thing, where he is a black man, and he has been oppressed.” Jordan kept his footing on the original allegation. “But I wasn’t saying that I believed Fury over him, I was asking him to explain his viewpoint, which he said to other people about why Fury had cheated.”

Jordan admitted the segment left him uneasy as it slipped off course. “At the time, I was a little bit embarrassed because I thought the show was coming off the rails, and Deontay Wilder is a big name.”

His internal reaction hardened while the conversation deteriorated. “So I’m sat there, a bit embarrassed by it, and then I thought ‘He’s a bit of a t**’, and then I thought ‘Is he on drugs or something? Or is this theatrics?’ And then I came to the conclusion that he’s not right, he’s not well, and all this ayahuasca stuff probably has worked in reverse. It is supposed to make you calm and zen-like.”

Jordan dismissed the idea that he chased confrontation. “I didn’t provoke Deontay Wilder by asking him a question that he didn’t want to answer. I asked him a question about something he said, not something I was trying to engineer into clickbait.”

Jordan indicated the broadcast missed the roughest stretch. “He called Tyson Fury a cheat. He’s sitting in England. Tyson Fury is a legend in some people’s minds here, so I thought it wasn’t unreasonable. And he didn’t like it, and he can’t answer it, so he gets all agitated and upset about it.”

He then described what he says followed off camera. “He turns it into a debate about oppression. There is loads more that you didn’t see. He threatened to punch me in the face and talked about lynching, and god knows what else. That looks like a man who’s struggling with things because there was no reason for that reaction. There was no provocation, there was no incitement.”

Wilder built his reputation on intimidation and the certainty that his right hand could settle any round. The studio demanded words and composure. He offered neither, and the division has long memories when a former champion loses control outside the ropes.