By Scott Gilfoid: With a week to go before his title defense against unbeaten knockout artist Deontay Wilder (32-0, 32 KOs), WBC heavyweight champion Bermane Stiverne (24-1-1, 21 KOs) has gone from being a quiet and humble champion to that of an overconfident individual who talks as if he walks on water. Stiverne and the 6’7” Deontay will be meeting up next Saturday night on January 17th on Showtime.
Stiverne, 6’2”, doesn’t see his lack of size as being a problem for him in this fight, as he says he’s always done well against taller fighters. Stiverne talks about his amateur days many, many years ago when he was beating taller fighters.
The taller fighters that Stiverne was beating back then were guys like the 6’8” David Price, who does a horrible job of using his height to his advantage and who has a shaky chin. Stiverne never really beat any taller fighter that you can compare to Deontay Wilder, and that’s the part that seems to be lost on Stiverne.
Stiverne struggled badly against a 6’6” Ray Austin back in 2011. Austin was in his 40s when that fight took place, and he dominated Stiverne until getting taken out in the 10th. Stiverne looked helpless against Austin until the knockout, and this was an Austin who really wasn’t using his jab.
The fight could have been completely one-sided if Austin had jabbed the shorter Stiverne all night instead of him simply bombarding him for the first 9 rounds. In terms of Stiverne’s style of fighting, he hasn’t changed a bit since his fight against Austin in 2011. He’s the same fighter. The only difference is he’s a little holder now and in his mid-30s.
“I predict a knockout. This is what I train for,” Stiverne said to ESPN. “It should be a sweet and short night. I say that because it’s a fact. With all due respect, I don’t think he deserves to be fighting for a title or that he’s ready to fight for a title. I think I’m at another level, especially with the history of him fighting the type of fighters he’s fought. I trained like I was fighting the best guy out there. I’m really surprised [at Deontay being the underdog]. He has so much coverage. People are expecting him to knock me out in the 1st round, first minute. If I’m not the underdog then that’s a first. I’m used to being the underdog. Maybe because of the title I’m not an underdog anymore.”
Stiverne has a little bit more experience than Deontay by virtue of his two fights against Chris Arreola, but when you take those two fights away, Stiverne and Deontay have similar experience in terms of opposition. Stiverne has faced some god awful opponents, and he’s not always done well against them, as we saw with Stiverne getting knocked out by journeyman Demetrius King in 2007 and his life and death struggle against Austin in 2011.
The King and Austin fights should have been easy ones for Stiverne, yet he had major problems against these two B level fighters. I’m not sure that you can call King or Austin B level. I think they were closer to C level and Stiverne couldn’t dominate against them. That’s really troubling.
When asked about Deontay’s size advantage being a potential positive for the 6’7” fighter, Stiverne, 6’2”, said “No advantage. My specialty has been tall guys since the amateurs. That was my specialty and all I’ve got to do is go back to the basics. In my amateur days I was always the guy who was the smallest. When I would fight on the national level in Europe, those guys were tall and big. That’s all I would fight and that gave me the experience. I don’t think I lost out there. I pretty much knocked everybody out. I don’t feel no way about that [Deontay sparring with journeyman Demetrius King, a fighter who knocked Stiverne out in 2007]. It won’t help him. At this point nobody will help him. This is going to be painful. I’ve heard him a couple of times about him expecting me to do certain thing in the ring which is a totally different Bermane Stiverne. It’s going to be night and day, the Bermane Stiverne that nobody has seen. It’s going to be Bermane at his best. I don’t think about Vitali [Wladimir] Klitschko. Deontay has all my attention. He will get it. On Saturday night, he will have my full attention. With regards to Klitschko, I don’t have anything to say about that.”
Whatever Stiverne did in the amateur ranks years ago are meaningless now. He’s not fighting an amateur from Europe on January 17th. Deontay is a professional, and he went further than Stiverne in the amateurs in winning a bronze medal in the 2008 Olympics. Stiverne didn’t make it to the Olympics. Stiverne’s wins over obscure guys in the amateur ranks means pretty much zero because he’s facing a taller, faster, more powerful Deontay Wilder next Saturday night, and it’s not going to help Stiverne to sit back and think about his glory days many years ago fighting mediocre amateur heavyweights in the amateurs.
Those days are over and Stiverne is not the young fighter he was back then. He’s nearing 40, and talking like he’s still in his early 20s. I hope for Stiverne’s sake he’s mentally grounded for this fight, because it’s starting to sound like he’s got his mind stuck in the past. If he thinks that Deontay is going to be like the guys he fought over 10 years ago, then he’s probably kidding himself. It’s a different fighter and a different situation.
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