“He caught me in a dazing moment,” Wilder said on his wobbly eighth round. “I f***ing zoned out for one minute, I don’t know what the f*** happened. The punch came but it wasn’t nothing that hurt, none of his punches fazed me at all.”
Boxing promoter Frank Warren suggested an injury might have been behind Wilder’s loss, claiming he had spent a long time in a cryo-chamber.
Warren told talkSPORT: “I was just talking to Shelly Finkel [Wilder’s manager] and they were telling me that he had a problem. He went into one of those cryo chambers and sat in it for a long time. I don’t know. Obviously, there’s going to be some excuse.”
The defeat has cast doubt on a future fight between Joshua and Wilder. However, Joshua has stated he would still be open to fighting Wilder if he is not up for a world heavyweight title fight.
“Wilder just came up short but he’ll live to fight another day,” AJ said. “Me and him could still get it on, we could still get it cracking. I believe I’m a massive threat, I still think Wilder’s a threat and I still think it does amazing numbers if we get it on. But I’ll leave that down to my management, trainers, promoters to make that decision – I’m down to fight anyone whenever, and whoever.”
But the American has claimed Joshua was planning to retire after his resounding win over Otto Wallin. “They really don’t want that fight,” Wilder told 78SPORTSTV, “When I lost did you see how happy he was coming out? ‘Now I can escape.’ I broke out laughing, I said, ‘That n***a’s happy as f***.’ I made him able to perform like that. He was like, ‘I ain’t gotta fight Wilder.’ “The rumour was he was talking about retiring if I won… One gentleman, he overheard them talking and he came back and told me what he heard, and their plans.
“They don’t really have true intentions of fighting me, they can say what they want, but I know for sure. My heart is shattered because I wanted to know what would have become of that. They can escape now if they want to… March 9, the fight still can go on. But this is a perfect way for them to get out.”