(Photo Credit: Stephanie Trapp/SHOWTIME) By Scott Gilfoid: After working hard to win the WBC heavyweight title last January, unbeaten Deontay Wilder (33-0, 32 KOs) isn’t about to let challenger Eric Molina (23-2, 17 KOs) take it off him on Saturday night in their fight on Showtime Championship Boxing.
Wilder isn’t going to let Molina have a chance of pulling off a big upset on Saturday night because he plans on scoring a quick knockout of the 6’5” fighter. Deontay wants to unify all the titles in the near future, as soon as he can get IBO/IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko to fight him.
It could prove difficult for Wilder to get a crack at Wladimir’s titles because the Ukrainian fighter may back off big time from a fight against Wilder if he looks too good in beating Molina on Saturday.
Wilder will still have to defend his WBC title later this year against his WBC mandatory challenger Alexander Povetkin. But you have to believe that if Wilder dispatches him too, Wladimir will back completely off wanting to fight Deontay because he’ll see him as simply too dangerous to mess with.
The Wilder-Molina fight will take place at the Bartow Arena, in Birmingham, Alabama, USA.
“This is my destiny,” Wilder said. “I worked too hard to get to this position. We’re not planning on this being the end. Everybody knows that Deontay Wilder gets the job done. I want all the belts, I’m greedy like that.”
Like Wilder, Molina doesn’t have much experience against top tier opposition. Molina’s toughest fight was against Chris Arreola several years ago. It didn’t go well for Molina with him getting knocked out in the 2nd round after staggering Arreola in the 1st round. I’m not sure that Arreola respected the kind of power that Molina had. But after Arreola was hurt, he definitely had respect for him, and he worked quickly to blast him out in the next round.
That was obviously a big learning experience for Molina. He learned that you can’t rush a big puncher like Arreola without paying a heavy price. Molina would likely do a lot better against Arreola now if the two of them were to face each other because Molina has matured since the Arreola fight, and definitely improved.
“We respect Eric Molina and what he’s trying to do,” Wilder said. “It’s a great opportunity for him. I was once where he was, in my last fight.”
Wilder hasn’t lost the challenger’s attitude yet. He’s only been the WBC heavyweight champion for five months, and it hasn’t really sunken in with Wilder yet that he’s one of the world champions in the heavyweight division. But what Wilder wants to do is own all the world titles so that he doesn’t have to share the titles except for the WBA title in which there are two of them. But if Wilder can get a fight against Wladimir and knock him out, Wilder will have all the major heavyweight titles in his possession. That will definitely be a big deal for Wilder and for America.
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