(Photo credit: Carlos Baeza) By Scott Gilfoid: Now that Bermane Stiverne (24-1-1, 21 KO’s) has beaten Chris Arreola (36-4, 31 KO’s) in their rematch, Stiverne has to deal with the difficult task of trying to beat a much bigger, younger, faster, taller and more powerful Deontay Wilder (31-0, 31 KO’s) in the near future. How long it;s going to be before Deontay gets a shot at Stiverne’s WBC title is unknown. That’ll depend on how strict the World Boxing Council are with their rules. However, Deontay sees the short 6’1″ Stiverne as an easy fight for him due to his bad habit of staying on the outside and hanging on the ropes. Deontay feels that there isn’t a more perfect opponent for him to knock out.
“It was the same old Stiverne. It was the same one that I saw in the first fight,” Deontay said to RingTV.com. “It’s going to be an easy fight for me. Not just easy, I’m talking E Z. It’s not going the distance.”
Deontay went on to say that he confronted Stiverne not long before the fight and that Stiverne told him that he’s not his mandatory challenger. Deontay said that Stiverne told him to speak with Al Haymon about him not being the mandatory challenger. Deontay told Stiverne that he is in fact his mandatory challenger.
As you can see there seems to be a little bit of confusion in terms of whether Deontay is or isn’t Stiverne’s mandatory challenger. I expect the WBC to clear that up soon enough, so it really doesn’t matter what either of these guys says. The WBC will be the decider.
Stiverne’s promoter Don King hinted in an interview with Radio Raheem that they’ll fight their mandatory next. However, King was going in a lot of different directions during the interview, making it difficult to know for certain what they’ll be fighting – or attempting to fight – next. Again, the WBC will be the one that makes the decision who Stiverne will be fighting next. IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko wants to fight Stiverne next to snatch his WBC title. That fight will depend on whether King wants that fight and whether the WBC gives him permission to take the fight with Wladimir ahead of his mandatory title shot against Stiverne. But if Stiverne takes the fight against Wladimir then chances of him facing Deontay are about zero, because Stiverne is too short to beat a fighter like Wladimir, who fights long and uses his 6’6″ height to dominate the shorter fighters like Stiverne.
Stiverne did a number on Arreola last night in halting him in the 6th round. After watching one round of the fight, I already knew the outcome of the fight because Stiverne showed that he could take Arreola’s power, but Arreola was having major problems trying to deal with Stiverne’s hard shots.
After the fight Arreola said “I couldn’t throw the jab. Every time I hit him, it hurt. That’s boxing. If you hurt your hand, you still have another hand. I believe I can become a world champion, I honestly do. As soon as my hand is OK, I’ll get back in the ring.”
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