Deontay Wilder looking forward to Alexander Povetkin fight

By Boxing News - 06/14/2015 - Comments

Image: Deontay Wilder looking forward to Alexander Povetkin fightBy Scott Gilfoid: After his beautiful four-knockdown, 9th round knockout victory over a game challenge Eric Molina (23-3, 17 KOs) last Saturday, WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder (34-0, 33 KOs) says he’s now ready for his #1 WBC mandatory challenger Alexander Povetkin (29-1, 21 KOs) in what could be the 29-year-old Wilder’s next fight later this year.

Povetkin, 35, recently defeated the tough as nails Mike Perez by a 1st round knockout victory in their WBC heavyweight eliminator bout last May to set up his shot aginst Wilder.

Now the only thing that needs to happen is for Wilder’s adviser Al Haymon to setup the fight against Povetkin, if that’s the direction Wilder will be going in for his next fight. There are all kinds of fights out there for the talented Wilder. He’s not just limited to the Povetkin fight. It all depends on Wilder, Haymon and the World Boxing Council. If the WBC orders the Wilder-Povetkin fight next, then obviously that’s the direction Wilder will need to take.

“I’m looking forward to my first mandatory,” Wilder said after the fight last night at the Bartow Arena, in Birmingham, Alabama, USA.

Wilder would be a very difficult opponent for the 35-year-old Povetkin, because the Russian fighter needs to fight guys that allow him to get close enough to land his power shots. Wilder isn’t that type of fighter who lets his opposition get in close to him. As we saw last night, Wilder uses his jab to spear his opponents and set them up for his brutal right hand shots.

I’m sure that Wilder will be studying Povetkin’s fight against Wladimir Klitschko in order to get a good blueprint to use to nullify Povetkin’s offense and turn him into a harmless entity. I think Wilder’s right hand, long jab and his mobility would give Povetkin fits. I can’t see the Russian fighter doing at all well against a guy as big and as powerful as Wilder.

Last night’s Wilder-Molina fight was televised by Showtime Championship Boxing at the Barstow Arena. There was a large crowd of 9,347 fans, who waited patiently until Wilder finished off Molina in the 9th. I got the sense that Wilder didn’t want to finish Molina off quickly in this fight due to there being a huge crowd.

I mean, Wilder could have put Molina out of his misery many times in the fight after dropping him in the 4th and twice in the 5th. In the 9th, Wilder got serious with Molina in nailing him with a peach of a right hand to the side of the head that sent Molina down on the canvas like a big ship sinking beneath the waves.

Molina rolled over on his back and was clearly out of it, leaving referee Jack Reiss with no other choice but to stop the fight at 1:03 of the round. Molina quickly got to his feet and wanted to continue, but Reiss wasn’t having any of it. He did the right thing by halting the bout rather than letting Wilder knock Molina down for a fifth time. It would have eventually ended with a clinical knockout if Reiss had let the fight continue, so it’s a good thing he stopped it when he did in order to save Molina from any further punishment.

“I was surprised by Molina, he showed tremendous heart,” Wilder said after the fight. “All the critics doubted him, but he showed that he was a very tough challenger. I needed a tough guy who had heart and who could get dropped and still come back up.”

Wilder said after the fight that he wanted to test the condition of his right hand, which he broke in his last fight. Wilder rarely used his fight hand compared to in his other fights. That kind of told you that there were some concerns there on Wilder’s part whether his right hand would hold up. The Wilder before his last fight against Bermane Stiverne would have knocked Molina out in the 1st round, but the version of Wilder we saw last night was very tentative with the use of his right hand. It looked like he wanted to take it easy on the use of his hand because it wasn’t the type of fight where it was imperative that Wilder use his No.1 weapon all that often. Wilder mostly used his jab and left hook last night rather than his right hand.



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