By Allan Fox: The May 10th fight between #1 WBC Bermane Stiverne (23-1-1, 20 KO’s) and #2 WBC Chris Arreola (36-3, 31 KO’s) will be staged at the Galen Center, in Los Angeles, California, USA. The fight will be televised by ESPN, as Showtime and HBO failed to go for buying the fight for some reason. The previous Arreola-Stiverne fight from a year ago didn’t bring in huge ratings, so that might have something to do with it.
Southern California was pretty much the only place where an Arreola-Stiverne fight would bring in a lot of fans given that Arreola is from Southern California and has a big fan base over there. There was talk of possibly staging the fight in Mexico, but that might not have worked because Arreola isn’t from Mexico. He was born in Los Angeles, and it might have been a mistake in staging it in Mexico.
Arreola and Stiverne will be fighting for the vacant WBC heavyweight title. Arreola already lost to Stiverne last year by a 12 round unanimous decision, but he suffered a broken nose in the fight and had breathing problems due to the damage to his nose. In the rematch, Arreola feels that he’ll avoid getting hit as much and will be able to get the win.
He’s going to need to keep his gloves up this time and use head movement, which he failed to do last time. Stiverne has a good job and a lot of power. He does well against fighter that come straight at him the way that Arreola did last year. Arreola probably won’t be able to bomb Stiverne out like he’s done his past opponents, so he’s going to need a different approach this time. Trying to slug with Stiverne didn’t work last time and it probably won’t win this time.
The winner of the Arreola-Stiverne fight will need to face mandatory challenger Deontay Wilder next unless they can get an exception from the World Boxing Council to fight a unification bout against IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko.
The WBC would have done a better job of attracting interest in a fight for the vacant WBC title if they had picked someone different to face Stiverne for this fight. The fact that Arreola and Stiverne fought just last year makes it a fight that fans are having a hard time getting excited about. Their fight last year was totally one-sided with Stiverne easily beating Arreola and knocking him down once.
Stiverne beat Arreola even worse than former WBC heavyweight champion Vitali klitschko did in his victory over him in 2009. That was the fight where Arreola started crying afterwards vowing to take his training more serious. He’s definitely done a great job of turning his career around and he’s a lot better shape now compared to how he looked years ago. But whether being in better shape will help Arreola beat Stiverne in the rematch remains to be seen. Arreola will need skills to defeat Stiverne, and it’s questionable whether he’ll have gained enough in just one year to beat a guy who totally dominated him a year ago.
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