(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) (Bermane Stiverne seen here tackling Deontay Wilder in the 2nd round on referee Tony Week’s blown call on a missed knockdown of Stiverne) By Scott Gilfoid: For boxing fans wanting to get a chance to see newly crowned WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder (33-0, 32 KOs), they could be seeing him three, possibly four times in 2015. Wilder says he wants to fight four times this year if possible.
Wilder’s immediate goal is to fight three times if he can. Given that he wants to fight both Tyson Fury and Wladimir Klitschko in 2015, it’s highly unlikely that Wilder will fight more than one more time this year unfortunately.
Setting up fights against Fury and Wladimir will likely take months to them together. Wilder be lucky if he can get one more fight this year if he’s going to face either of them.
“I want to get 3 or 4 of them in,” Wilder said.
If Wilder doesn’t get Fury next, then he’ll likely be defending his title against #2 WBC Alexander Povetkin or possibly #3 WBC Bryant Jennings, if Jennings doesn’t wind up facing Wladimir Klitschko next on April 25th. Fury obviously is an option, but it’s doubtful that the big British heavyweight will agree to fight a puncher like Wilder. Fury wants the Klitschko fight and he’s the WBO mandatory challenger, so he’s probably going to take that fight after his mismatch next month against tune-up opponent Christian Hammer on February 28th at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
Stiverne’s promoter Don King was impressed with Wilder, saying to the Nypost.com “Wilder definitely won it. He did a great job. He was having fun. I’m very surprised he won so easily. But you can’t win a fight without throwing punches. This is not a waltz. I’ve seen it happen many times before. It’s just the way it goes. I have to take my hat off to Deontay. Stiverne wasn’t active enough. All praise to Deontay Wilder.”
It wasn’t that Stiverne wasn’t active enough, it was more of a case of Wilder having too much arm length, and too good of a jab for the 6’2” Stiverne to get close enough to land his big power shots. Each time Stiverne did try and close the distance, Wilder would pump in a jab or a right hand into the face of Stiverne, and that kept him from getting his shots off.
Further, Wilder’s right hands were coming in straight and hard and that kept Stiverne from being able to counter with his left hooks. The shots were big enough to where they would paralyze Stiverne for a fraction of a second, and this would enable Wilder to lean back to avoid Stiverne’s retaliatory left hooks.
Wilder wasn’t falling into Stiverne when he would throw his right hands the way Wladimir Klitschko tends to fall into his opponents when throwing his rights.
What was surprising about the fight was how good Wilder was on the inside. He showed good power in throwing short punches to the head while at the same time smothering Stiverne’s attempts to land his own shots.
Wilder proved to be very competitive when he was in close quarters. Stiverne is usually deadly on the inside in his fights, but Wilder proved to be the better fighter when in close.
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