Mike Tyson: It won’t be easy for Deontay Wilder to hit Bermane Stiverne

By Boxing News - 05/21/2014 - Comments

deontay6677By Scott Gilfoid: Mike Tyson says he thinks unbeaten heavyweight talent Deontay Wilder (31-0, 31 KO’s) will have problems landing his big power shots against WBC heavyweight champion Bermane Stiverne (24-1-1, 21 KO’s) in their still unscheduled heavyweight clash this year. For some reason Tyson thinks the 6’2″ Stiverne is hard to hit despite the fact that he was nailed early and often by his last opponent Chris Arreola in their recent fight on May 10th.

Besides the elusiveness problem that Tyson thinks Stiverne presents, Tyson wants to see what happens when Deontay gets hit a lot. He thinks that it says a lot about a fighter in the amount of punishment they’re able to absorb.

“You can tell a champion by the amount of punishment he can take,” Tyson said. “Fighters want to see what can he take. What’s going to happen when people start hitting him back? What is he going to do? And that’s what the boxing world really wants to see. And I believe when he fights Bermane Stiverne, that’s going to be an interesting fight, because that guys is pretty elusive. I don’t believe it’ll be as easy to hit him as the other guys were. It’s going to be an interesting fight.”

Deontay has so much power, and he’s so quick and so big at 6’7″ that he doesn’t have to play a punching bag for anyone in order to prove that he can take punishment. Deontay gets dumped on by a lot of boxing fans for him not taking punishment in fights, but the real problem is his opponents aren’t able to handle his power for more than a round or two before dropping for the 10 round.

It’s kind of the same problem that a young George Foreman had when he was knocking everyone out in in the first few rounds. People wanted to see if Foreman could take punishment, and whether his stamina was good. But you couldn’t fault him for doing his job and knocking his opposition out as fast as possible.

“I don’t know,” Tyson said when asked who will win between Deontay and Stiverne. “I would have to go with the other guy [Stiverne], because the other guy is experienced, he’s fought better competition. But I could be wrong. Wilder could knock him out. He is a hard puncher. Anything can happen.”

I disagree with Tyson. I think Stiverne would be one of Deontay’s easiest fights because he just hangs back on the ropes begging to be hit. It would be like Deontay’s fight against Sergey Liakovich with Deontay nailing Stiverne while he’s backed against the ropes, and sending him down for a quick 1st round stoppage.



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