Deontay Wilder: 12 days [until Bermane Stiverne fight]

By Boxing News - 01/05/2015 - Comments

wilder54By Scott Gilfoid: Deontay Wilder (32-0, 32 KOs) is eagerly counting off the days until his huge fight on Showtime Championship Boxing against his nemesis WBC heavyweight champion Bermane Stiverne (24-1-1, 21 KOs) at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. The fight will be taking place in 12 days on January 17th.

Wilder has no love for Stiverne and its personnel for him. Deontay wants to beat Stiverne because he doesn’t like the guy, and of course he also wants to bring the title back to the United States and to his own state of Alabama.

“12 days,” Deontay said on his Twitter today in counting off yet another day. He’s been counting off days for a while now, and it reminds me a lot of someone counting days off before Christmas or some special holiday event. Deontay doesn’t fear his clash with Stiverne. On the contrary, he’s looking forward to it like it’s a forgone conclusion that he’ll beat him and take the WBC title back to the United States.

“For me, winning a world title, that’s a once in a lifetime achievement,” Deontay said via RingTV.com.

It definitely is a big deal for Deontay, even though he still won’t be considered ‘the man’ at heavyweight after a win over Stiverne. IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko is widely seen as the top heavyweight in the division until proven otherwise.

It’s going to take a win over Klitschko for Deontay to get the kind of respect that he feels he deserves. Even if Wilder beats Wladimir, he’ll still need to defeat guys like Bryant Jennings, Tyson Fury and Alexander Povetkin for him to be recognized as the No.1 heavyweight in the division. Those guys are seen by a lot of boxing fans as being the best in the division underneath Wladimir, although I frankly don’t agree that Fury deserves to be on the list because he’s not yet beaten anyone that I could remotely call a good heavyweight. Fury was kind of exposed by Steve Cunning ham after getting knocked down by him in their fight in 2013.

Stiverne doesn’t want to give up his WBC title, so you can expect him to be ready to fight tooth and nail until the bitter end to try and keep his strap. The problem is Stiverne has limited size and a whole lot of flaws in his game that is going to leave him vulnerable to Deontay’s big right hand power shots.



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