But will it be better than Alabama and Auburn football at home?
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Today’s Wilder-Duhaupas weigh-in is open to the public. By now, everyone in Tuscaloosa knows Deontay Wilder. Wilder is considered a raw power puncher, who seems prone to be out-boxed by more experienced boxers.
“Heavyweights are the cream of the crop”.
“We’re bringing it back”. If anyone is looking past him, they’re a fool.
“I’m comfortable with the way my career has gone”, Wilder said. “We’ll have to see what’s in the future, but right now I’m anxious about what’s in the present”.
In preparing for the bout, Wilder acknowledged that becoming the undisputed heavyweight champion is his ultimate goal. He answered the main question critics had, and now there are more. The Klitschko era can not last forever and Wilder plans to bring all the belts back to America. I don’t even read anything.
“I’ve been training extremely hard for this opportunity”.
Wilder won his belt in January with a one-sided rout of Bermane Stiverne and defended it in June with a sometimes-rocky ninth-round knockout of Eric Molina.
As fast as Wilder has climbed the ladder, the expectation is for Wilder to never slow down.
“The Bronze Bomber” hopes to stir some more face recognition on Saturday, when he defends the WBC heavyweight title against Frenchman Johann “The Reptile” Duhaupas (32-2, 20 KO) on Premier Boxing Champions on NBC at 8:30 p.m. ET, from the Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Ala. How obscure is the 34-year-old Duhaupas? “Perhaps even in [his hometown of] Abbeville, France, that might be the case”, joked Marv Albert, who will call the fight for NBC. Beterbiev’s promoter plans on putting in the winning bid for the fight and then staging it in Canada, where Beterbiev now fights out of. The heavyweight division has suffered some decline. Some of the greatest of all time developed on free television. They want the fight to take place in November, but it’s likely that the IBF will need to look for another opponent for Beterbiev that is able and willing to fight in Canada.
In the scheduled 10-round co-feature, heavyweight Dominic Breazeale (15-0, 14 KOs), a 30-year-old 2012 U.S. Olympian from Alhambra, California, will face Fred Kassi (18-3-1, 10 KOs), 36, a native of Cameroon fighting out of New Orleans and coming off a draw with longtime contender Chris Arreola in July.
The word from insiders is that Duhaupas is better than most people think. “So while we’re negotiating those fights, we’re still fighting these guys”. Do I have to say more? I think he’s an outstanding athlete and that knockout percentage speaks for itself.
Well, we’re going to find out. “The possible fights with Klitschko, Tyson Fury and [mandatory challenger] Alexander Povetkin take time to get done”. These guys are coming to win. “This guy can be an instant millionaire in one night”. Wilder said. “He’s a tough guy”.
“That’s understandable, but I’m not the first one that he asked to fight”, Duhaupas said.
“I am the next great fighter in this sport that will fill the shoes of Floyd Mayweather now that he’s retired”, he said. “I’m definitely an active champion; once I became champion, I told people that I want to stay active”.
Wilder’s Olympic medal has been a first-class ticket for a bullet train towards the WBC title, stopping only to wreak havoc on whatever overmatched opponents were set in front of him. But Deas said nothing could be further from their mentality.
“It’s his mentality. He has a fighter mentality”, Deas said. But Lucien showed grit to hang around for the whole 12 rounds, although the most any judge gave him was a share of one session (and that was just the one judge).
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Rodriguez, who had been born in Casablanca, Morocco, was so lightly regarded that his Holmes challenge went ahead in Scranton, Pennsylvania (setting for the USA version of The Office and thus an American byword for a “nothing” town).
