By Scott Gilfoid: Tony Weeks will be the referee for this Saturday’s title fight between WBC heavyweight champion Bermane Stiverne (24-1-1, 21 KOs) and Deontay Wilder (32-0, 32 KOs), according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. Weeks has never worked one of Deontay’s fights before, but it’s not important because referees are mainly used for counting out Deontay’s opposition rather than playing any huge part in the fight.
The judges for the Stiverne-Wilder fight are as follows: Adalaide Byrd and Jerry Roth, both of Nevada, and Craig Metcalfe of Canada. The judges will likely be equally unimportant in this fight because this is a match-up that is heading for a knockout either way. One of these guys going to get knocked out in this fight.
Stiverne, 36, is hinting that he won’t be pulling back against the ropes in this fight like he always does in his past fights. Stiverne is giving the impression that he’s going to stay off the ropes and fight in a much different way than he has in the past.
Whether he’s got the youth and conditioning to keep of the ropes is the big question, because he’s kind of pudgy and he seems to need to lay against the ropes when he gets tired in order to regain his strength. The problem is he lays on the ropes against Deontay, he’s going to get nailed with something big and that might not be a good thing for Stiverne.
“Let him [Deontay] believe I’m going to fight that way. I’m not about to give away my game plan for this fight,” Stiverne said via RingTV.com “This ain’t about power; it’s about skills and being smart.”
If Stiverne was truly a smart fighter, he would never let himself back up against the ropes in any of his fights, but the reality is he always falls back against the ropes and he generally struggles when he’s there. Stiverne has been able to get away with this bad habit in most of his fights because his opposition has been largely god awful during his career.
Stiverne has only fought one decent heavyweight in Chris Arreola, and even that guy is totally flawed. Stiverne tried to lay against the ropes in his fight against journeyman Demetrius King in July 2007, and he paid for it by getting knocked out in the 4th round.
In Stiverne’s last fight against Arreola last May, Stiverne was nailed by a lot of big shots from Arreola when he fought with his back against the ropes. However, Stiverne was later able to get off the ropes and take the fight to Arreola in the 6th to get a stoppage win.
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