By Jeff Aranow: With challenger Alexander Povetkin’s promoter Andrei Ryabinski winning the recent purse bid for the fight against WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder (36-0, 35 KOs), the fight will now be taking place in Moscow, Russia rather than the United States.
Wilder and his team are talking about having part of their training camp take place in Russia or nearby in order to avoid jetlag. It’s a long flight from where Wilder lives in Alabama to Russia, and they don’t want to setup a situation where Wilder has to take a long flight to Russia the week of the fight.
That kind of thing could leave the 6’7” Wilder stiff and tired for days after. It would be a potentially negative thing for Wilder to have to endure that close to the fight.
If Wilder is going to be training in Russia, then he needs to make sure he has a good place to train and not be dealing with problems. Roy Jones Jr. is now a citizen of Russia. He might be someone that Wilder’s management can talk to.
“We may potentially spend part of the camp closer to Russia,” said Wilder’s trainer Jay Deas to tuscaloosanews.com. “We would do half the camp here and then we’re looking the possibility of doing the rest of the camp somewhere closer to Russia. Or we may just wait and do the whole camp here and then go to Russia two to three weeks ahead of time. We need to be somewhere in Russia or close to Russia that we can train.”
It should help Wilder train in Russia or at least be close enough so that he won’t be worn out from a long flight.
It’s unfortunate that Wilder’s management team failed to win the purse bid for the fight, because it would have been ideal if they had been able to win it and then stage the fight in the United States somewhere like New York or in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Many boxing fans believe that Povetkin is the guy that will walk Wilder down and stop him. Wilder isn’t too worried about him though. He feels that Povetkin will be no different than the other fighters he’s beaten in his career. Wilder is counting on his 6’7” size and power to deal with whatever the 36-year-old Povetkin brings to the table in this fight.
Povetkin is going to need to be careful at all times against Wilder because if he gets hit with a clean shot like Wilder’s last opponent Artur Szpilka, he could be going to sleep in the ring. Szpilka was knocked completely out by a right hand from Wilder in the 9th round last January. Szpilka had to be taken out of the ring on a stretcher.
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