By Dan Ambrose: The soon to be 34-year-old former world title challenger Chris Arreola (35-4, 31 KOs) will be attempting to turn his sagging career around next month in his fight against an opponent still to be determined on March 13th at the Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario, Calif.
The fight will take place on a Friday. Arreola, #13 WBC, has lost two out of his last three fights in two defeats against Bermane Stiverne and a victory against Seth Mitchell.
Arreola has been out of the ring since he was blasted out of the ring in 6 rounds by Stiverne last May in Los Angeles, California. Arreola didn’t really take much punishment in the fight other than him being knocked out.
In Arreola’s first fight against Stiverne in April of 2013, Arreola took a bad beating and wound up with a badly broken nose for his trouble. The nose was broken early in the fight, and Arreola chose to fight most of the fight with the broken nose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2dGYhpAZPw
Also on the card will be former IBF/WBC welterweight champion Andre Berto facing Josesito Lopez, as well as former IBF 147 pound champion Shawn Porter battling the hard hitting Roberto Garcia. The fights are part of the “Premier Boxing Champions” series on Spike TV.
“I’m itching to get back in the ring and show that I’m still going after my dream of being heavyweight champion of the world,” Arreola said. “This is a wonderful platform for me to fight with Premier Boxing Champions and I couldn’t be more excited to fight in front of my fans here in California.”
Arreola’s management are going to need to be careful in the type of opposition that they put him in with, because Arreola has problems with fighters that can box and use their jab. Stiverne was able to pound Arreola badly by throwing little more than stiff jabs in their first fight in 2013.
It would also be a good idea not to let Arreola fight Stiverne ever again, because Arreola clearly doesn’t have the talent to beat him. Even the version of Stiverne that Deontay Wilder defeated recently would likely have no problems beating Arreola by a lopsided decision or a knockout.
With his #13 WBC ranking, it’s going to take Arreola awhile this time for him to work his way back into another world title shot. Thus far, Arreola has had title shots against former WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko and a fight for the vacant WBC title against Stiverne.
Under the best of circumstances, it’s probably going to take at least two to three years before Arreola can get another world title shot. Arreola could speed that up if he took risky fights against top 10 contenders, but I doubt that’s going to happen.
It would be too risky to put Arreola in with some solid fighters, even though he’d have a decent chance of winning as long as he was matched against the right guy. I think Arreola would get beaten by guys like Alexander Povetkin, Carlos Takam, and Mike Perez. But Arreola would have a good chance of beating someone like Kubrat Pulev.
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