By Scott Gilfoid: British fighter David Haye attended last night’s fight between Bermane Stiverne (24-1-1, 21 KO’s) and Chris Arreola (36-4, 31 KO’s) for the vacant WBC heavyweight title at the USC Galen Center, in Los Angeles, California, USA, and Haye says he didn’t see anything in Stiverne’s performance that would suggest that he can beat the WBC mandatory challenger Deontay Wilder (31-0, 31 KO’s) when it comes time for Stiverne to defend against him.
Right now it’s still unknown when Stiverne will take that fight with the 6’7″ Deontay, but he’s going to have to fight him sooner or later or else the WBC will strip him of the title.
“Judging by that fight [Stiverne vs. Arreola 2] there, I think Deontay knocks him out, and knocks him out pretty easily,” Haye said. “Maybe in 8 or 9 rounds, he [Deontay] softens him up and then closes the show. But going by that performance, he was getting hurt by Arreola, who isn’t a not a real noted puncher…Deontay has much, much longer arms. The length of arms would be a big, big difference,” Haye said.
Haye is probably right. Ray Austin, 6’6″, was spearing the shorter Stiverne with punch after punch without getting hit in their fight in 2011 and was leading on the cards at the time he was stopped in the 11th round. Austin was 40-years-old at the time, and he had no power to speak of, yet he was dominating the fight at the time he got careless. Deontay is a really big puncher, and he’s going to give Stiverne all kinds of problems with the huge right hands he’s nailing him with round after round. I can’t imagine Stiverne being able to take Deontay’s power for a full 12 round fight, because he hits way too hard.
With the way that Stiverne likes to fight with his back against the ropes, he’s going to take some vicious head shots. He would have to hope that Deontay would get eventually tired of hitting him in the head so that he could turn around and try to plod after him. I wouldn’t like to get hit for 8 or 9 rounds by Deontay’s right hand bombs. Even if Stiverne was still standing by the 8th, he’d likely be so punch drunk from the right hands he’d eaten that he wouldn’t be able to do anything to try and turn the fight around. Deontay backs away when his shorter opponents come at him, so Stiverne would continually be hitting air with his shots due to his short reach.
Comments are closed.