Deontay Wilder – Eric Molina to be announced on Thursday

By Boxing News - 05/13/2015 - Comments

deontay1By Scott Gilfoid: This Thursday on May 14th a news conference is scheduled for the announcement of the June 13th fight between WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder (33-0, 32 KOs) and challenger Eric Molina (23-2, 17 KOs). The fight will be taking place on Showtime Championship Boxing from the Bartow Arena, in Birmingham, Alabama, USA.

With this being a voluntary defense for the 6’7” Wilder, he’s choosing a lower level ranked contender in 33-year-old Molina. But this is a perfectly suitable opponent for a voluntary defense because Molina has the kind of fire power and talent to make it an interesting fight.

Many world champions choose to face the lowest possible contender at No.15 when they make their optional title defenses.

Wilder needs to get past Molina so that he can move forward to the bigger fights like a potential match-up against IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitshcko next year.

That’s a fight that will bring Deontay a lot of money. He also wants to face Britain’s Tyson Fury if he can, but that’s a fight that may not be possible unless Deontay starts showing more vulnerability in the ring.

With the way that Deontay looked in his last fight against former WBC heavyweight champion Bermane Stiverne last January, I don’t know that Fury will ever elect to face him. None of this will really matter though if Fury gets whipped by Wladimir this year. In that case, Fury will go to the end of the line and will need to claw his way back up the latter to get other title shots in the future.

Before being extended for the first time against the steel-chinned Stiverne, Deontay had knocked out his first 32 opponents during his career. But you can expect Deontay to start another knockout streak starting with Molina on June 13th. If Deontay is able to win his next 30+ fights, it would be a huge accomplishment because most of the guys he’ll be facing from this point on during his career will be high quality fighters like Alexander Povetkin. Knocking out this level of competition will be more difficult for Deontay, but definitely not impossible. His punching power is so good and his size and his hand speed so superb that he has a chance of knocking anyone out.

This fight is Molina’s big chance to prove himself because it’s going to be seen by a lot of people. It’s doubtful that Molina will ever get another world title shot so he’s going to need to make the most of this opportunity.



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