By Dan Ambrose: Former world title challenger Chris Arreola (36-4, 31 KOs) will be fighting next month against an opponent still to be determined on July 18th on the undercard of the Carl Frampton vs. Alejandro Gonzalez Jr. card on CBS on Premier Boxing Champions from the Don Haskins Center in El Paso, Texas.
Arreola is trying to put distance between himself and his poor performance against Bermane Stiverne last year in May of 2014 in getting stopped in the 6th round in an attempt to capture the vacant IBF heavyweight title.
An over-weight looking Arreola followed up that performance with a harder than expected eight round unanimous decision win over little known 2nd tier fighter Curtis Harper last March.
Both fighters looked badly out of shape. Harper took the fight to Arreola and dominated the first four rounds before gassing out in the 2nd half of the fight. This allowed Arreola to come on and take the fight by set of scores that were much wider than the actual fight would have you believe.
Arreola is running out of chances with his once promising career. He was beaten by former WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko by a 10th round knockout in 2009 in a fight that was incredibly one-sided from start to finish.
“I can’t wait to get back in the ring and show my skills on CBS,” said Arreola. “I’m about excitement and I know that everyone who comes out in El Paso and everyone watching on television will get an entertaining fight.”
Despite losing two out of his last four fights, Arreola is still ranked in the top 15 at No.12 with the World Boxing Council. The ranking makes little sense given how poor Arreola has looked.
Arreola needs to try and change his fighting style to implement more boxing to his game because he’s not a big enough puncher to stand in the pocket against the big sluggers in the division like Stiverne and some of these other guys like Lucas Browne. If Arreola doesn’t change up his game, then it’s only a matter of time before he gets beaten again. Once that happen, I suspect he’ll be knocked out of the top 15, and then he’ll be heading towards becoming a journeyman, if he’s not already there.
There are some fighters that Arreola matches up well again. Unfortunately, Stiverne isn’t one of them because he’s now beaten Arreola twice. He gave Arreola a bad beating on two occasions.
Arreola has nothing to lose at this point because his career is pretty much rock bottom. He might as well go for broke by facing a good contender because it’s going to take him a long time to work his way back to a mandatory spot if he uses the same formula that he used to get the fights against Vitali and Stiverne.
Comments are closed.