Former heavyweight boxer turned trainer Malik Scott reflects on his recent split from Deontay Wilder’s corner and shares his insights on the current heavyweight landscape. From Jake Paul’s serious pursuit of a Wilder fight to his own ambitions of training Jon Jones for boxing, Scott provides candid perspectives on some of the sport’s most intriguing storylines.
Jake Paul is Dead Serious About Deontay Wilder Fight
I’ve been in New York for the Katie Taylor fight and I just met Jake Paul’s partner [Nakisa Bidarian], literally three minutes ago. And the first thing he said was, ‘we’re interested in the Deontay Wilder fight’.
He asked me, “what do I think of it?” They’re just so serious. Some of the things that he said confidently to me, really makes you know that they’re not fake confident, they really are confident [in defeating Wilder].
I don’t know if it will ever materialize into something, but they’re on to something, this whole Jake Paul thing, and I believe the key to their success is timing.
But we’re talking about Jake Paul in the ring with Deontay Wilder, it just makes no sense at all. But unfortunately Jake Paul is a big money guy in the sport of boxing right now.
It Wasn’t Surprising At All’ When Deontay Wilder Sacked Me
Did I sense it was coming? I’ll say this, I wasn’t surprised because you just never know how a fighter is. The media runs with things, story after story.
I’m sure he’s hearing things on his side about what I am, and what I’m not, like in the media certain platforms just running with what I did to him, just so much stuff.
And he already got so much pressure on him wanting to get better mentally and so forth, so it wasn’t surprising, it wasn’t surprising at all.
I’m sure it’s not because I’m some awful trainer, like that’s not why [he ended it], sometimes fighters do what they need to do spiritually for themselves, to get themselves better, to get themselves remotivated, to get themselves rejuvenated.
Deontay Wilder’s had the ‘Dream Team’ – defeats “Cannot Be Explained“
I came in as the head coach at the beginning of my coaching career. But Jay Deas and Don House and Cuz Hill. They’re there, it was always a collective team thing.
I was never like “I’m the head coach and I’m calling it like that”. No, it was always, “I am the head coach, Deontay hired me, but Jay, ‘how you think we should do this”, or Don ‘what you think we could do with this”.
Don House came in, and he put emphasis on Deontay back running out there and running hard.
I complimented that, I was all with that.
Jay Is an incredible strategist, a camp coordinator, and he also knows boxing. Cuz Hill is an incredible young trainer coming up. Then you have Malik Scott and my boxing brain. It really had a dream team type of feel.
But you could have a dream team and have a great camp. And then boxing is just a sport that
you could go in a ring, things could still go wrong, and it can’t be explained
Deontay Sacked Me But defeat’s “Nothing To Do With Me”
He personally called me. We talked about it, he said ‘I’m gonna do something different, I want to switch things up a bit’ as far as the head coach thing goes. Right when he said it, I didn’t ask why, I thanked him for bringing me on.
I got real love for Deontay. I want the best for him, and if the best for him is without me, don’t nobody want that more than me.
What I don’t want is for me to be around and I’m not the best thing for him. We lost the Tyson Fury fight together, we lost Joe Parker, and we lost Zhang together, and we got an incredible knockout with Robert Helenius together, but we lost two fights back to back.
Deontay can lose fights with anyone in his corner, that’s just boxing, that has nothing to do with Malik Scott. It’s really just boxing and life too.
Deontay Wilder Suffering From A Lack Of Confidence
I thought it was a good return bout. The opponent was good for where he’s at mentally, and like Deontay says, he’s gonna do a couple more of those and when the big names come, he’s gonna be ready for those big names.
It’s obvious what the motive is with these fights right here, it’s to build him back to where he was. He’s very transparent about being not as confident as he was at one time.
He’s very transparent about his mental aspect and needing help and things of that nature, so for him to get in a boxing ring under all of those conditions and have a fight like that, I commend him on it.
Deontay Wilder’s next fight will not be in America
I think I heard him say one of his next fights is overseas right, I just don’t know. Dave Allen is having some great momentum right now.
He’s got two wins over Johnny Fisher, but do I think it’s a good fight for Deontay?! I’m not sure. I heard Deontay say that they were going to one or two more how they just did [at a lower level]. But I just don’t know how serious Dave is to speak on it.
Daniel Dubois can become undisputed champion
I actually think Dubois right now has a good shot to beat Usyk because he’s rebuilt himself. He’s a different man, mentality-wise. He has Don Charles in his corner. He’s been locked in for quite some time now, and he’s had some incredible victories.
His last few outings. He clipped AJ, Filip Hrgović, Jarrell Miller, so that goes to show that the way he got those wins, the narrative that was put out on it was completely wrong, because it was about him not having no heart. He showed nothing but heart in all those last few victories.
People labeled him as one thing, and he showed them that they were wrong—not with his mouth, but with his actions.
I want to replace Deontay Wilder with Australia’s ‘better’ version of Tyson Fury
Teremoana Teremoana is a fighter I’d like to work with. His confidence reminds me in a better way of a young Tyson Fury, very marketable.
I don’t know how his work habit is in the gym, but I’m sure that’s something I could hugely add on, and what I’m very impressed with is when he fights.
He fights like a man that’s happy that he’s a big man. He fights very imposingly. He fights very tall. There’s just so much that I believe that I can add on to big heavyweights like that man.
If I could get them while they’re young, I can mould them and actually teach him some things that would be beneficial for his style of fighting because he’s a big man now.
I want to replace Deontay Wilder with Jon Jones, I will train him to beat Francis Ngannou in boxing
Somebody of my expertise in Jon Jones’s corner, not just give him a few pointers, but to show him the hows and whys and things of that nature that he could benefit from in the boxing ring.
That’s something that I would definitely be open to and we’ll see if it materializes to something. With guys like Jon coming into boxing the opponent choice is very imperative.
He’s never done just boxing before and it’s different from MMA, especially when you and there were guys that know what they’re doing. I think preparation is everything.
And if you want to switch over to boxing. I think your preparation should include people that know boxing and not just know MMA in boxing. You need pure boxing guides
I would like to see something like journeyman first and then him and Francis possibly get it on in a boxing match, since Francis did boxing before.
Kate Scott’s boxing debut ‘dead forever’ it made me too ‘nervous’
I would say it’s dead forever. I’ve been in love with Kate the last few years, and the love has got deeper and deeper and deeper, and at one time Kate boxing was something I was entertaining.
But I’m so crazy about this woman that I would never want to see her box right now. I was deeply in love with her before, and was sketchy and nervous about it, and now I just can’t even imagine it.
I’m cool with just training my wife on pads. We were looking at fights together, but I never want to see her box. I wouldn’t say I persuaded her but my energy speaks for itself. It’s not something that I bring up. It’s not something that I entertain.
Khabib showed ‘ultimate respect’ when he refused to shake my wifes hand live on CBS
It was an ultimate respect thing [Khabib declining Kate’s handshake]. I think what made it funny is the kid Speed, he was on the side.
And this was the thing I loved – how Kate handled it. I actually loved how he handled it as well. That’s not what he does. He doesn’t shake women’s hands because of his religion.
You have to respect people that stand on what they stand on, and they don’t have picks when they do it. It’s not like he’s shaking a bunch of women’s hands and he gets to Kate and says, ‘I’m not shaking her hand’.
This is how he moves. He’s a real Muslim. I don’t wanna make it seem like there’s fake Muslims out there, but this is someone that lives the life.
Kate doesn’t take stuff like that personally, because she understands life, culture, religion, people. And you know it just was another thing. Another moment for the books