Deontay Wilder needed less than three minutes Saturday night to take out two years’ worth of frustration on Dominic Breazeale.
The hard-hitting WBC heavyweight champion obliterated Breazeale by blasting him with a crushing right hand that knocked him out in the first round at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Wilder’s pulverizing punch to the side of Breazeale’s head left the challenger flat on his back and quickly brought the crowd of 13,181 to its feet.
“Everything just came out of me tonight, you know?,” Wilder told Showtime’s Jim Gray in the ring. “I know there’s been a big buildup to this fight and there was a lot of animosity, a lot of chaos, a lot of hatred against each other. It was a lot of words that was said, and it just came out tonight.”
The 6-feet-7, 223¼-pound Wilder drilled the 6-feet-7, 255¼-pound Breazeale with a right hand that hurt him with about 1:40 to go in the first round. Breazeale backed into a neutral corner, but he tried to fight out of that trouble by firing hard shots back at Wilder.
Eventually, though, Wilder was able to perfectly time a devastating right hand that knocked Breazeale senseless.
