By Scott Gilfoid: The World Boxing Council has ordered a WBC heavyweight title eliminator bout between #3 WBC, #4 WBA, #9 WBO, #11 IBF, Bryant Jennings (20-0-1, 12 KO’s) and #5 WBC, #8 WBO, Mike Perez (18-0, 10 KO’s), according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. This would be a second WBC title eliminator, because Deontay Wilder already fought in a WBC title eliminator bout last Saturday night in stopping Malik Scott in the 1st round in Puerto Rico.
It’s unclear why the WBC wants to have two eliminators for the WBC champion, but the idea is that the winner of the Chris Arreola vs. Bermane Stiverne fight for the vacant WBC heavyweight title on May 10th will then be faced with the uncomfortable task of having to fight back to back mandatory title defenses against first Deontay Wilder and then the winner of the Jennings-Perez fight.
That’s like someone being forced to run the gauntlet. How come the other sanctioning bodies like the WBO don’t do this? We have Arthur Abraham capturing the WBO 168 lb. title with a win over Robert Stieglitz in their third fight together in two years, and now Abraham is going to make an easy title defense against Nikola Sjekloca in his first defense instead of being ordered to take on his No.1 mandatory challenger.
If Jennings and Perez are unable to negotiate the fight, there will be a purse bid on April 25th.
“Jennings is very athletic and we believe he has the speed and movement to beat Perez,” promoter Gary Shaw said to ESPN. “Perez, in his last fight, showed he has trouble with speed and movement. Jennings is not going to stand in front of him with no head movement and try to catch bombs. This is not his style.”
Actually what did happen in Perez’s last fight is he fought a big pressure fighter in Carlos Takam last January, and he ended up getting badly out-worked and dominated by the bigger and stronger Takam. There was no movement from Takam other than straight forward. He simply walked the smaller cruiserweight-sized Perez down and beat him up on the inside, where Perez has little in the way of skills or power.
Jennings doesn’t have Takam’s size, power or inside fighting skills, so he’s going to need to be able to use movement to box his way to a decision because he won’t beat him by standing in front of him.
Jennings is coming off of a 10th round stoppage win over Artur Szpilka from last January.
Comments are closed.