Arreola vs. Stiverne preview and analysis

By Boxing News - 04/26/2013 - Comments

1528By Allan Fox: Super-sized heavyweights Chris Arreola (35-2, 30 KO’s) and Bermane Stiverne (22-1-1, 20 KO’s) will be fighting it out tomorrow night in a scheduled 12 round bout at the Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario, California.

Arreola weighed in at 248 pounds in his weigh-in earlier today. Stiverne, also a wide body heavyweight, came in at 247 lbs. Neither of the guys looked slim, but it’s normal for them to look this way.

Arreola has the better experience of the top, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot because Arreola has failed against the better guys he’s faced in losses to Vitali Klitschko and Tomasz Adamek. Stiverne is the better puncher of the two, but he’s also slightly smaller at 6’2” compared to the 6’3” Arreola.

What could end up hurting Stiverne for this fight is his poor work rate. He doesn’t tend to throw a lot of punches, and instead he looks to load up with single shots and then take long rest breaks. In his fight against Ray Austin two years ago, Stiverne really struggled until he was able to hurt Austin with a big right hand and take him out in the 10th round. Stiverne didn’t lose his power even late in the fight.

Arreola has a good chance of winning this fight if he can box Stiverne and keep the action on the outside. He has a much better jab and he can do a lot of things that Stiverne can’t do if he’s fighting a disciplined fight.

Where Arreola could get into big trouble is if he elects to fight Stiverne in a toe-to-toe manner like he did against his last opponent Eric Molina last year in February. Arreola was badly staggered in the 1st round of that fight.

Arreola did come back to stop Molina in the 2nd round, but it didn’t look good him getting badly hurt by a near novice fighter with zero experience against quality opposition. Molina was just some guy the WBC ranked high in their top 15 but without the needed experience to be ranked.

It’s been three years since Arreola fought a quality opponent. His promoter took him away from fighting quality opposition after he was beaten by Adamek, and it’s been soft opposition ever since for Arreola. He’s won seven fights since his loss to Adamek, but his opposition has been poor to say the least.

Maybe his promoter believed that he had to do this for Arreola to save his career, but normally you don’t keep a fighter on soft opposition as long as Arreola has been without it hurting his career. Had Arreola fought quality opposition all this time, he’d have likely gotten another title shot two years ago. Instead, he used up three of his career fighting guys that did little for him.



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