Arreola to fight on Ortiz-Lopez undercard on June 23rd

By Boxing News - 05/21/2012 - Comments

Image: Arreola to fight on Ortiz-Lopez undercard on June 23rdBy Dan Ambrose: #1 WBC, #3 IBF, #4 WBO, #8 WBA heavyweight contender Chris Arreola (35-2, 30 KO’s) has been added today to the undercard of the June 23rd fight between Victor Ortiz and Josesito Lopez at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. Arreola, 31, will be fighting a 10 round bout against an opponent to be named later.

Arreola is being targeted by IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko for a defense in December at Madison Square Garden in New York. With that big fight possibly ahead of him in the near future, Arreola can’t afford to suffer a defeat against anyone. As such, you can look for Arreola to be matched against another soft opponent to make sure he gets through this fight. Arreola has already won seven soft fights in a row after suffering a loss to Tomasz Adamek in April 2010.

Rather than risk looking to other top contenders, Arreola decided to go back to the basics and fight B and C level opponents to get back to winning. He’s done well against the limited opposition he’s been put in with, although he had a shaky first round in his last fight against little known fringe WBC contender Eric Molina last February.

Arreola was shockingly staggered by Molina before getting his wits about him and coming back to stop the nearly defenseless Molina in the same round. It wasn’t a good sign that Arreola was seen getting staggered by a fighter in the caliber of Molina, especially with a big fight coming up against Wladimir.

It kind of showed that there hasn’t much improvement in Arreola’s game other than him losing a little weight from what he was scaling in between 2009 and 2010, Arreola’s fat periods. He’s a little more in shape compared to then, but not a lot. In the Molina fight, Arreola looked chunky at 245lbs. It looked like be put on some extra weight because he seemed to have lost some strength in losing 15 pounds.



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