WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder stopped Chris Arreola, despite having a broken right hand and torn bicep?
Saturday night at the Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama, WBC World heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder (37-0, 36 KOs), the undefeated ?Bronze Bomber? from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, stopped veteran Chris ?The Nightmare? Arreola (36-5-1, 31 KOs), from Los Angeles, California, despite having a broken right hand and torn bicep.
Fighting out of the blue corner in white trunks emblazoned with an image of Muhammad Ali, Wilder ran circles around his game but limited challenger. Arreola, fighting out of the red corner in navy blue trunks, came to fight, but the champion came to box and that was the difference between winning and losing.
Arreola was giving up big advantages in height, reach and age, but he still managed to outweigh Wilder by 20 pounds. That excess weight didn?t erode Arreola?s resilience. He was, however, slower than usual, and against a particularly quick, athletic champion. Arreola did his best work when he was able to trap Wilder on the ropes and work the body. But mostly he ate big punches from the bigger man, jabs, hooks, straight rights and uppercuts, all of which cut the challenger down to size and forced the end of the fight.
The challenger began bleeding in round two. Wilder dropped Arreola with a straight right in the fourth. The Mexican?s face was swollen and his left eye was closed when the fight was finally stopped.
The always reliable Jack Reiss might have stopped it sooner, as Arreola took a beating and never had a chance of winning. But the ref stopped in time for Arreola to fight another day.
?I didn?t quit,? said Arreola. ?Deontay made me quit. My corner made me quit. They kept me from getting hurt myself.?
Wilder continues to improve. The quintessential late starter may be coming into his own and wants to fight WBA and IBF champions, which coincidentally is what we want as well.
?My goal is to unify the division,? said Wilder after the fight. ?I?m one of the baddest, hardest-hitting heavyweights in the business. So whoever?s got those belts, that?s who I want. It don?t matter if I got a broke hands, got a torn muscle, I?m gonna fight like heavyweight champion fight. I don?t play boxing. Of course, I want the Furys, I want the Joshuas. The question is: Do they want me??
That is indeed the question.
