Chris Byrd was on On The Ropes boxing radio show, and he had some interesting comments about his fight with Vitali and being contractually obligated to fight Wladimir next. Seems they did that to him, like they were wanting to do to David Haye.
On whether he was satisfied by the way he won the WBO title against Vitali Klitschko:
“How I feel about the win? My thought is you don’t quit the fight. I don’t care what happens. If you’re a champion, you know you’re winning, why would you quit? You just don’t do that. I’ve been injured in many fights that people don’t even know about. I’m a very small guy. I mean, I’ve suffered major injuries in the ring while I boxed, and one of them being I got my nose broke, pushed all the way over in the first round. I didn’t quit. I didn’t tell anybody. I just sat in the corner and was like, ‘Oh my goodness’, because if the doctor would have checked me they would have stopped the fight. I didn’t want to lose. So with the heart of a champion, you keep fighting. With German reports of the fight, as opposed to HBO, in Germany they had either way 5-4 for either person going into the tenth round. So I don’t know if he was hearing German reports and the fight was close, but you don’t cop out. You may have a shoulder injury but you keep fighting. It’s part of the sport, it’s a hurt sport, so looking at that I would have kept fighting. That’s why I was so happy after the fact that it didn’t seem like he was truly hurt, but in the fight I threw really good body shots and early on he wasn’t grunting at all when I hit him to the body and then in the fifth or sixth round he started to, and I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m getting to him, more and more, and people don’t see this’. I’m like wow. That’s why I kept cutting the distance if you noticed in the fight and he ended up quitting. It was a cheerful moment for me because I took this fight on eight days notice and I hate to say it, but I had major diarrhea going into the fight because I wasn’t adjusted to the food and I was drinking juice over there that was 100% so it goes right through you and when I got in the ring I probably weighed 199 pounds and I’m fighting a guy who weighed around 250. I was just extra excited and overwhelmed with emotion because that was a giant killer everybody said, that I’m hearing, that nobody could beat. He was 27-0 with 27 knockouts, I’m like, ‘Man, I guess I am pretty good’. Especially coming off of the Ike Ibeabuchi loss which still haunted me, and I’m in the mix now, where I wanted to be.”
On his first fight with Wladimir Klitschko and having to fight him immediately after beating his brother Vitali:
“Like I said, the politics and business of boxing, it was a great time in my boxing career to win the title but then I had to go with the business and politics of boxing. Really, if you’re not at the top level and going through stuff, you really don’t know what’s going on behind the backdoor with negotiating and how they plan and want to put people in certain situations. It wasn’t for me to be WBO champion at that time, so of course, from the fight with Vitali to Wladimir there was so much negotiating that was going on that was terrible. It wasn’t in my favor and they forced me to fight Wladimir in my very next fight. It wasn’t really deserved, I don’t think and I waited. He had two fights and an exhibition in that whole time. They wouldn’t allow me to have an exhibition or do nothing. I mean, he had an exhibition like three weeks before we fought and I’m like, ‘This is crazy’. But the Germans were the lead promoters and that’s their fighter, and when you understand what goes on, like I said with the business side and the business decisions, which favors the Germans so I was told I still have to fight. I go in and fight, he beat me really bad—I mean it was bad. More power to him.”
Entire interview recap and audio by clicking here.