By Scott Gilfoid: Earlier on Friday, Russian promoter Andrey Ryabinsky of World of Boxing won the purse bid to stage the title fight between WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder (36-0, 35 KOs) and his mandatory challenger Alexander Povetkin (30-1, 22 KOs). Ryabinksy is the promoter for the 36-year-old Povetkin, and he made a winning bid of $7.15 million to Wilder’s promoter Lou Dibella’a bid of $5,101.000.42.
Ryabinsky now has exactly 90 days to stage the fight. The big question is where he is going to stage the fight. Povetkin supposedly is willing to fight Deontay in the United States; although I am not so sure why he would want to do that other for kicks. T
here is no point in putting all that money into winning the purse bid if the idea is to stage the fight in the U.S in front of what would likely be a small audience unless they staged it in Wilder’s home state of Alabama. I do not think Wilder vs. Povetkin would sellout Madison Square Garden or the Barclays Center in New York.
I think it’s the same thing with the MGM Grand or the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. There wouldn’t be enough interest in that fight to sellout those venues. It’s not that Deontay isn’t a highly popular fighter. It’s more a case of him fighting a guy that isn’t well-known in Povetkin.
“I look very positively on this,” Povetkin told ESPN.com. “It’s interesting. Secondly, Wilder is a world champion. Thirdly, the United States of America is the center of global boxing. I always want to box the best, and it doesn’t matter which country, Russia or USA. It doesn’t matter to me.”
I doubt that Povetkin was serious when he made his above comment. I think he was just being pleasant and saying nice things. I do not think for a second that he is interested in fighting in the U.S. That would defeat the whole purpose of his promoter Ryabinsky making that huge bid for the fight.
Povetkin would be better off taking the Deontay fight to some place in Russia and fighting in front of a huge pro-Povetkin crowd than he would if he staged the fight in the U.S in front of a smaller crowd that mainly supports Wilder. You have to remember that Deontay fights on adrenalin, and he gets that from the crowds.
If Povetkin comes to the U.S to fight Wilder, then that is going to give Deontay a big advantage because he is going to be extra confident fighting in front of his own fans. I do not think it means anything when it comes to the scoring of the fight by the judges, because Deontay’s fights do not go to the judges. He has only had that one fight against Bermane Stiverne that went to the judges last year in January, and the only reason that fight did not end in a knockout was because Deontay broke his right hand early in the fight and couldn’t use his hand to finish off Stiverne after he stunned him early on.
I frankly rate Stiverne as a better fighter than Povetkin. The problem that Stiverne has is he rarely fights. Stiverne has fought only once since his loss to Deontay last year. When you are a contender, you should be fighting frequently rather than on a rare basis the way that Stiverne is. If he had kept fighting after his loss to Wilder, he likely would be back at No.1 and knocking at the door for another shot at a title.
We’re very happy to fight for 70 percent of 7.15 million on our side,” DiBella said to Rafael at ESPN.com. “There was never any chance that Deontay was going to vacate his title. The fight is happening. If they put the fight in Russia, then I hope [Russian President Vladimir] Putin can personally attend so he can watch ‘Sasha’ get knocked out.”
I do agree with Dibella. This is going to be a hard fight for Povetkin to win, because Deontay is like a better version of the prime Wladimir Klitschko right now in my opinion, and we saw what Wladimir did to Povetkin in 2013. I think that was Wladimir at 90 percent of his prime, and he was much too good for Povetkin.
Povetkin earned his way to the No.1 mandatory spot by beating Manuel Charr, Carlos Takam and Mike Perez. You can scratch off Charr’s name as being any kind of accomplishment for Povetkin, because he is little more than a 2nd tier fighter. Beating Takam and Perez was impressive for Povetkin. He also recently beat Mariusz Wach by a 12th round knockout.
Dibella says Deontay WILL NOT be vacating his WBC heavyweight title to avoid the Povetkin fight. Deontay will be taking that fight wherever Ryabinsky wants it to take place. They are ready to travel to Russia if they have to and defend the title against Povetkin.
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