By Allan Fox: #2 WBC Chris Arreola (36-3, 31 KO’s) has new confidence after beating Seth Michell by a 1st round knockout in his last fight in September. Arreola is no longer thinking about his one-sided round unanimous decision loss to Bermane Stiverne (23-1-1, 20 KO’s) from last year in April. Arreola will be facing Stiverne in a rematch on May 10th, and he feels he’s going to avenge the loss and then go after IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko to unify the heavyweight world titles.

Arreola and Stiverne will be fighting for the vacant WBC heavyweight title that was recently vacated by Vitali Klitschko. Arreola thinks he’s got a pretty good chance of beating Stiverne this time because he’s not going to be dealing with a broken nose, and he plans on fighting more defensively than he did last time. Arreola made things easy for Stiverne by plodding straight forward and letting his head block punches instead of him using his gloves or using head movement to evade the shots.

“I want to win the title and then go after Wladimir to go get the rest of the titles,” Arreola said to ESPN. “Bermane Stiverne breaking my nose was the most excruciating thing I’ve had.”

If Arreola beats Stiverne, he’s not going to get an automatic unification bout against Wladimir unless the WBC makes an exception and lets Arreola bypass his mandatory challenger Deontay Wilder. It’s possible that the World Boxing Council may let Arreola do that, but I have a feeling that they won’t. They seem to have put Deontay in a situation where they’re making it easy for him to get a shot at the WBC belt.

It might be in the WBC’s best interest to have Deontay as the WBC heavyweight title due to the potential fans he can bring in due to his long knockout streak, and his big power. With Arreola, he’s already been exposed in the past and he doesn’t bring the same kind of excitement. He’s not as flashy as Deontay, and he soaks up a lot more punishment.