Wilder And Breazeale Get Into Post-Fight Brawl in Hotel Lobby!
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (February 26th, 2017) – Dominic Breazeale got his shot at Deontay Wilder much sooner than he expected.
The huge heavyweight contender and the WBC heavyweight champion got into an altercation late Saturday night in a hotel lobby after they won their respective bouts by knockout at nearby Legacy Arena. The incident occurred after Breazeale and Wilder’s younger brother, Marsellos Wilder, got into separate altercations at Legacy Arena and in the lobby of The Westin Birmingham, across the street from the arena.
Once Deontay Wilder arrived at the hotel from the arena, he went after Breazeale because Breazeale again got into it with Wilder’s younger brother, a former football standout and an amateur boxer. Multiple eyewitnesses told BoxingScene.com that the confrontation mostly amounted to pushing and shoving among many people, and eventually spilled outside.
The Birmingham Police Department helped restore order at The Westin Birmingham and neither Wilder nor Breazeale is believed to have been arrested.
Less than an hour earlier, Wilder mentioned during a post-fight press conference at Legacy Arena that he had a problem to settle with Breazeale.
“I’m a very respectful person,” said Wilder, a native of nearby Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “And when you come to my home, you’re gonna respect me as well, too. He had an altercation with my little brother. You don’t mess with my little brother. If you have a problem, you come to me and we can handle it. We can deal with it accordingly. So with that, I’ve got a problem with him. And it ain’t no problem that I wanna see him [about] in the ring. So I’ll see him.”
Wilder wasted no time “seeing” Breazeale, but it might not make it any likelier that a Wilder-Breazeale bout will occur anytime soon. The 31-year-old Wilder (38-0, 37 KOs), who knocked out Gerald Washington (18-1-1, 12 KOs) in the fifth round Saturday night, wants to face the winner of a May 6 bout between WBO heavyweight champion Joseph Parker (22-0, 18 KOs) and Hughie Fury (20-0, 10 KOs) in his next fight.
Breazeale, meanwhile, salvaged his career Saturday night on the Wilder-Washington undercard.
The 6-feet-7, 263-pound Breazeale (18-1, 15 KOs) overcame a fourth-round knockdown to drop powerful Polish prospect Izu Ugonoh (17-1, 14 KOs) twice in the fifth round and won by knockout. The dramatic comeback enabled Breazeale, of Eastvale, California, to avoid knockout defeats in back-to-back bouts.
Unbeaten IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua (18-0, 18 KOs) stopped Breazeale in the seventh round of his previous fight, June 25 in London.
Christina Breazeale, Dominic’s wife, told UCNLive.com, “After Dominic’s fight, he came to sit ringside with me and the kids. He had our five-year-old sitting on his lap, our eight-year-old sitting between us. To the left of Dominic was Wilder’s brother, and I guess some friends, and my son was cheering on Gerald Washington because we know him personally. I guess they didn’t like that and, after Wilder won, they jumped up, started cussing, hovering over my husband and my five-year-old saying,”F’ you; you’re next. He’s going to kill you’ – stuff like that.
“So my husband stood up and said, ‘Don’t do this in front of the kids. Calm down; you’ve had something to drink,’ just trying to calm the situation. So we thought that was it. We left the arena, got back to the hotel. We went upstairs. (Dominic) got showered; we got changed, went down to the lobby to get some food. It was the cornermen, Manny (Robles), Carlos (Vargas), Jerry (Gonzalez), myself and our kids.”
And when they went downstairs…well, according to Mrs. Breazeale, Deontay was wild’n out.
“Right when we got into the lobby, where the front doors are, it seemed like they were waiting for us. It was him and at least 20-plus of his friends,” she stated, making it clear that the “him” to whom she referred was Wilder, himself. “He was the leader of the pack, the ringleader, and he and his friends bum-rushed my husband. Pushing him against the area where you check into the hotel and (Wilder) was poking (Breazeale) in the face and cussing at him, ‘How dare you touch my brother?’ and Dominic was telling him, ‘Calm down; calm down. I didn’t touch anybody. What are you talking about?’ and (Wilder) was threatening to do all kinds of things to him.”
Turned out it was more than just threats.
“Dominic got pushed in the back of his head by (Wilder’s) brother. Manny got him in the face; Carlos was pushed to the ground. I was being pushed around by his friends; my kids got separated from me. Some woman took my kids into the bathroom to protect them. It was mayhem in there,” she recalled.
So where was security during all this?
“I have no idea; there was no security,” said Breazeale’s spouse on Sunday morning, before their flight back to Los Angeles. “The police came…it seemed like it took forever.”
“I got clipped,” said Robles, who is Breazeale’s head trainer. “I got punched in the chin. I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire life, not from a world champion. You’re representing the WBC, man. You’re the heavyweight champion of the world.” Robles says Wilder landed a “sucker-punch” on his fighter in the hotel. “It was a big overhand right. It caught (Breazeale) right on the back of the head and he just went down.” (In all fairness, with Wilder’s technique, maybe it was just one of his usual punches.)
Just how long did this incident take place?’
“I want to say maybe 10 minutes, 10, 15 minutes – but it seemed like an hour,” said Mrs. Breazeale, who could at least chuckle a bit about such a harrowing experience. As for how things eventually dispersed, she stated, “There were people from the pub; there’s a pub connected to the hotel that were pulling Dominic and the rest of us in and trying to close the door because the rest of (Wilder’s) people were trying to kick down the door to get to Dominic. So when they closed us in, I didn’t have my kids. I didn’t know where they were.
“So I ran outside to go back through the front door to find my kids and Dominic and the rest of his team were inside the pub where they were keeping the doors closed. So once I got into the bathroom to find my kids, that’s when the police showed up and, from what the police said, they sent (Wilder’s camp) to their hotel rooms.”
There were no arrests made on Saturday night.
“The sergeant told us that a punch is a misdemeanor and they don’t arrest anyone for that,” she explained. “I said, ‘This is far worse than a punch; this was an attack by a large group of people,’ and he said, ‘Well, we can’t do anything about that.’ I was shocked; my children were still screaming, crying and this is the worst part: While he was in my husband’s face, I was begging him, ‘Please stop; my kids are here.’ My kids are standing there screaming and (Wilder) looked at me and said, ‘F’ your kids,’ in my face.”
The Breazeales plan on pursuing this matter further. “My children are traumatized. They did not sleep last night,” she said, the emotion clear in her voice.
With all that happened, they were forced to check out early.
“We were escorted by the police out of the Westin and had to stay at a different hotel and, this morning, the police had to escort us to the airport,” she said. Both Wilder and Breazeale are advised by Al Haymon, so it’s not clear if any type of peace treaty can be worked out. Breazeale’s wife told UCNLive.com, “We have our attorney on top of it, as well, as far as getting the footage from the hotel lobby because that’s the proof in the pudding. But we’re definitely going to seek legal action for anything else because our children were traumatized.”
— Dominic Breazeale (@TroubleBoxing) February 26, 2017
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