By Scott Gilfoid: #1 WBC Bermane Stiverne (23-1-1, 20 KO’s) and #2 WBC Chris Arreola (36-3, 31 KO’s) will be meeting up this Saturday night on ESPN to fight for vacant WBC heavyweight title at the Galen Center in Los Angeles, California. This is a rematch of a fight that took place last year in April in which Stiverne easily beat Arreola by a 12 round unanimous decision. Stiverne broke Arreola’s nose, and knocked him down once in the fight to earn the victory.
The only reason that the two heavyweights are battling again is because the WBC decided for some reason to give Arreola another shot, even it doesn’t make any sense at all that the two fighting again. Stiverne easily beat Arreola, and the World Boxing Council should have pushed one of the top contenders such as Deontay Wilder to the No.2 spot to face Stiverne. By not doing this it likely caused the major networks to reject the fight, because the last thing they need is to televise another one-sided heavyweight clash like the Arreola-Stiverne fight.
Unless Arreola improves tremendously over his performance from a year ago, he’s not going to be able to beat Stiverne. I don’t see that happening. Stiverne beat Arreola at his game by out-punching him, but also out-boxing him as well. I mean, there was absolutely nothing Arreola could do to compete with Stiverne in that fight, because his jab wasn’t as good as Stiverne’s, and his power wasn’t as good as his either.
Stiverne’s defense was also better. There was way too many areas were Stiverne was superior to Arreola for him to be able to turn things around in their rematch. As such, the WBC kind of blew it by not picking another guy to fight Stiverne instead of having Arreola fight him again.
It’s like have Joe Frazier go into an immediate rematch with a young George Foreman after having been blown out in 2 rounds in their previous fight. What does the WBC expect Arreola to do? He was so badly out of his class that it doesn’t matter how many times the WBC gives Arreola opportunites to try and win the WBC title, he’s simply not going to do it, at least not against Stiverne. Stiverne really has Arreola’s number, and we’re going to see that on Saturday night. I just wonder if the WBC is going to turn around and give Arreola another shot at the WBC title in a little while. The WBC needs to get it’s act together and start doing a better job of ranking fighters, because there’s no way that Arreola should be ranked at No2. after the way Stiverne beat him.
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