Wilder vs. Arreola – make proper fights please!

By scottbells - 05/27/2016 - Comments

Chris Arreola

By Scott Bells: It was reported yesterday that Deontay Wilder is lining up Chris Arreola for his voluntary defence mid-Summer. I hope for the sake of boxing that this isn’t the case. I have read writers (particularly one on this site) bashing fighters for being matched up softly recently but this fight would really take the crown.

Chris Arreola was considered a decent heavyweight in 2009-2012 after he fought Vitali Klitschko but was soundly beaten. A subsequent loss to Pole Tomasz Adamek showed that he did not quite have what it took to be operating at world level (Adamek was a world class cruiserweight but not considered world class at heavyweight).

Subsequent sporadic wins (one against Seth Mitchell) have threatened to revive his sagging career but two comprehensive losses against Wilder victim Bermane Stiverne confirmed what many already knew.

If Wilder was to take this fight, then it would be the fourth straight defence against soft opposition; Eric Molina and Johann Duhaupas were barely passable but you can forgive a new champion to some extent for taking an easy first defence (Wilder was rocked in the Molina fight)or even two, but when he fought Artur Szpilka, the southpaw stance gave him fits for a few rounds before Wilder got the KO – Szpilka is not a world level heavyweight either and was easily beaten by Bryant Jennings.

Wilder cannot take this fight as it would be a huge mismatch and makes him look like he is interested in soft touch opponents; the Povetkin fight was a mandatory which would have been very interesting as a yard stick for how far Wilder has come and would have been by far Wilder’s best opponent.

I am a huge Deontay Wilder fan; he looks clumsy and amateur at times but has explosive power and is exciting even if vulnerable. Fighters with his style make the heavyweight division exciting.

But, we must be clear and fair in our judging. One writer on this site will praise Wilder whatever he does, and will likely support a Wilder fight against Arreola or Bryant Jennings even though he opposed British fighter Anthony Joshua fighting either only a couple months ago when rumours were floating. This is not right, and we need to all judge fairly as this should be a very exciting time for this division.

Joshua himself is an exciting fighter who has an interesting first defence against Domninic Breazeale which should be straightforward, but at least Breazeale carries an unbeaten record and Olympic experience. I wouldn’t mind if Wilder was fighting an unbeaten fighter or at least someone relevant.

Obviously being unbeaten does not mean you are necessarily good as shown by David Haye’s recent performance against the Cobra! This guy had an inflated record and ranking and was fodder! Haye is allowed a couple warm up nfights after coming back from a 4 year lay off but two is enough and now time to get down to business.

Incidentally, Haye-Wilder would be a cracking match-up and Haye would likely get ranked easily if the fight was on the table.

The point of this article is that fighters need to insist on the best matches being made; Wilder himself has criticized other fighters but has to walk the walk himself instead of fighting completely shot has-beens from yesteryear as a voluntary defence.

If Arreola is the opponent, then Wilder will actually lose credibility from a lot of boxing fans across the world for prolonged soft match-making. It makes you wonder why he has had such soft voluntary defences and whether he is serious about fighting a Joshua, Klitschko, Fury or even Ortiz type elite fighter. For boxing’s sake, I hope Wilder leads from the front and takes the hardest matches available.