WBC makes Vitali Klitschko Emeritus champion

By Boxing News - 12/16/2013 - Comments

vitali254By Scott Gilfoid: The World Boxing Council finally did the right thing and elevated the inactive WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (45-2, 41 KO’s) to the WBC Emeritus champion, which means the WBC heavyweight title is now vacant and available for 2 of the top 3 contenders to fight for it in the near future.

Who the WBC will allow to fight for the title isn’t yet known at this time, but the top 3 guys are as follows: 1. Bermane Stiverne 2. Chris Arreola 3. Deontay Wilder.

Since Stiverne already beat Arreola by a 12 round unanimous decision last April, I don’t see any point at all in those two fighting again. I mean, it makes no sense in those guys facing each other in back to back fights.

The only sensible thing for the WBC to do is to order Deontay Wilder to fight Stiverne for the vacant heavyweight title and then allow Arreola to fight the winner after, of course, the champion is given the opportunity for a couple of optional title defenses first.

Mauricio Sulaiman from the WBC said this about Vitali’s new status via RingTV “The WBC is proud and honored to confirm the status of Vitali Klitschko as WBC Heavyweight World Champion Emeritus.”

So there it is. Vitali is now able to do what he wants in terms of following his political career, and then when he wants to he can fight for the WBC belt once the smoke clears and we have a new champion. I’m not sure if we’ll see that though, especially if Vitali ends up the new president of Ukraine. He won’t have time to put his political career on hold for him to start training again just to fight for a world title one more time.

Vitali hasn’t defended his WBC title since beating fringe contender Manuel Charr last year in September, and he hasn’t fought a mandatory contender for 2 years since his win over Tomasz Adamek.

Deontay vs. Stiverne would be an exciting fight due to both of them being huge punchers. It would give Deontay his first opportunity to fight a good opponent, and it would give Stiverne the chance to fight arguably the hardest puncher in the heavyweight division. One thing is for sure, one of these guys would be knocked out. I don’t see that fight going the distance.



Comments are closed.