By Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten heavyweight talent Deontay Wilder (33-0, 32 KOs) will be back in the ring next month on June 13th looking to extend his unbeaten streak against a still to be determined opponent in Birmingham, Alabama.
Wilder, 6’7”, saw his long 32-fight knockout streak end last January in his fight against WBC heavyweight champion Stiverne, but he was still able to get an easy victory. Deontay would have had an excellent chance of scoring yet another knockout if Stiverne had come to fight, but he looked like he was just there to survive after taking some vicious shots to the head in the 2nd and 7th rounds.
Additionally, Deontay suffered a broken right hand early in the Stiverne fight which kept him from being able to load up on his right hand shots the way he needed to in order to score another knockout.
“I will be back in the ring June 13th. Back in the state of Alabama, in Birmingham. And that’s my next fight,” Deontay said via Fighthype.com. “No opponent has been announced yet – we still got a lot of ironing out to do – but June 13th I’ll be back. I always said I want to be undisputed heavyweight champion of the world and that’s what I’m going to do.”
Deontay, the WBC heavyweight champion, wants to unify all the titles in the heavyweight division by taking on IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, but that’s a fight that will need to wait until likely 2016 for it to happen. Even then, it’s going to hinge on whether Wladimir can get past unbeaten British heavyweight Tyson Fury first in 2015. As bad as Klitschko looked in beating American Bryant Jennings this month, it’s questionable whether Wladimir will get past Fury. If he loses to Fury then that’s probably bad for Deontay. I can’t see Fury’s promoter putting him in with the talented Deontay if he picks up Wladimir’s four titles, I just can’t.
If Fury captures those straps, I can see him going on a long, long milking run where he faces a lot of fringe level heavyweights in order for him to get as many paydays as possible. Putting Fury in with a guy with huge 6’7” size and one-punch power like Deontay would be near suicide for the 6’9” Fury. I mean, there would be zero margin of error for Fury in a fight against Wilder because even if Fury were to look good and negate Wilder’s big power shots for much of the fight, it would still only take one good shot from Deontay to knock Fury silly. Deontay still punches with major power even late in his fights, as we saw against Stiverne. He could get in theory get Fury late if the British fighter goes into a prevent defense for the entire fight. One big jarring head shot from Deontay would likely be all it takes for him to KO Fury and knock him clean out. That’s why I think it would be bad for Wilder if Fury beats Wladimir because the two heavyweights would be then fighting in separate lanes.
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