By Scott Gilfoid: Well, I knew it was going to happen. The WBC has postponed the May 21 fight between WBC heavyweight champ Deontay Wilder and his mandatory challenger Alexander Povetkin so that they can look into the 36-year-old Russian’s positive drug test for the banned substance Meldonium.
Povetkin tested positive for Meldonium during one of VADA’s tests during April.
Having the fight postponed and potentially canceled altogether might turn out to be a good thing for Povetkin. Some boxing fans saw this fight as a hopeless situation for Povetkin because he’s smaller than Wilder.
Povetkin would have needed a cast iron chin to take the heavy blasts from Deontay’s right hands in the fight, so there’s little chance that the fight would have gone to the second half of the fight anyway.
The fight being postponed and possibly canceled might have saved Povetkin from becoming another of Wilder’s KO victims. Deontay has already done it to 35 of his 36 opponents. The only guy that Deontay didn’t stop thus far was Bermane Stiverne, and you can argue that the only reason he was able to go the full 12 round distance against Deontay because he suffered a broken right hand early in the fight.
If the hand wasn’t broken, I think Stiverne would have been another knockout victim. As such, the Wilder-Povetkin fight getting called off for now isn’t such a bad thing when you look at the big scheme of things of how the fight would have likely played out. The Russian fans would have been screaming like mad on May 21 in trying to encourage Povetkin to win the fight, but this in turn would have only motivated Wilder to start landing big shots Povetkin’s chin with his sledgehammer right hands. I mean, Povetkin has good punching power, but his chin was previously shown to be vulnerable in his fight against Wladimir Klitschko in 2013.
Povetkin was knocked down four times by Wladimir, and that was with Wladimir fighting timidly by holding 24/7. You can only imagine how many times Povetkin would have been knocked down if Wladimir had fought aggressively. He just had no punch resistance at all. I think it’s a case of Povetkin being a small heavyweight in the Odlanier Solis mold and not having the size to compete against the super heavyweights like Wladimir and Deontay.
This would have been the 6’7” Wilder’s fourth defense of his WBC strap and it likely would have been him in line for a monstrous payday against either Tyson Fury or Anthony Joshua.
Wilder needed Povetkin’s scalp to make a fight against Joshua or Fury a huge fight. Now without Povetkin’s pelt, Deontay will need to look in another direction towards someone like Luis “The Real King Kong” Ortiz to get a nice name to add to his resume. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that a Wilder vs. Ortiz fight can get made because Ortiz is with Golden Boy Promotions and Deontay with Al Haymon. I just don’t know.
“Keeping the priority of safety and also the principle of justice, the WBC will continue the investigation into the case,” the WBC said in a press release sent out on Sunday on the Wilder-Povetkin fight. “Consequently, the event scheduled for May 21 in Moscow is hereby officially postponed. The WBC will be releasing more information in the coming days regarding the final ruling on the matter.”