Arreola vs. 39-year-old Ahunanya on 7/9

By Eric Thomas: The now slender heavyweight contender Chris Arreola (32-2, 28 KO’s) will be facing 39-year-old journeyman fighter Friday Ahunanya (24-7-3, 13 KO’s) next month in a scheduled 10 round stay busy fight at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Arreola, 30, is currently ranked #2 WBC, #5 IBF, #12 WBO, #15 WBA, and really doesn’t have to face a real contender to get another crack at one of the heavyweight champions in the near future.

Ideally, it would be nice to see Arreola face at least one top tier heavyweight before getting another title shot – and likely getting blown out again – but don’t count on it happening. Arreola was beaten by the last contender he fought Tomasz Adamek last year in a 12 round decision loss in April and it doesn’t look as if Arreola is in any hurry to face another top contender. In his last four fights since the Arreola loss, Arreola has beaten four 2nd tier fighters Manuel Quezada, Joey Abell, Nagy Aguilera and Kendrick Releford and looked decent.

Arreola has taken off a lot of flab and is now down in his mid 230s. However, Arreola is almost as slow as he was when he was fighting in the 250s and he’s lost power. On the plus side, Arreola is throwing more punches and putting more pressure on his opponents, so it’s not all bad. However, he hasn’t shown any sign that he would be even slightly competitive with the Klitchko brothers. Arreola could, in theory, give WBA heavyweight champion David Haye some problems if he could get a fight with him. However, Haye is about to fold up shop and retire at the end of the year, making an Arreola-Haye fight an impossibility.

Ahunanya has lost his last two fights to David Tua and Cisse Salif and not looked particularly in either fight. It would be asking a lot of Ahunanya to be able to pull off an upset over Arreola.

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