Deontay Wilder to get title shot if he beats Malik Scott on March 15th

By Bill Phanco - 02/08/2014 - Comments

After 6 years as a professional, #3 WBC Deontay Wilder (30-0, 30 KO’s) is on the cusp of fighting for a heavyweight world title if he can beat Malik Scott (36-1-1, 13 KO’s) on March 15th at the Coliseo Ruben Rodriguez, Bayamon, Puerto Rico. The Wilder-Scott fight will be a WBC eliminator bout, and the winner of that fight will be getting a title shot in 2014 against either Chris Arreola or Bermane Stiverne, depending which one of these guys emerge as the winner of their fight for the vacant WBC title in April or May.

“I’m totally capable of being a world champion, just like Emanuel Steward once said that I would,” Deontay said to RingTV. “It’s going to be most important that, come March 15, I display something that I never have before and that I show the world that Deontsy Wilder has really arrived now and that I’m really to be the world champion.”

Scott was knocked out last year in the 6th round by Dereck Chisora in England, so he’s an unusual opponent for Deontay. A better match-up would have been Deontay facing someone like Bryant Jennings or Mike Perez. At least with an opponent like that, we’d know for sure that we’d get a fully vetted guy fighting the Arreola-Stiverne winner. That’s not to say that Deontay can’t beat Arreola or Stiverne, because he has the kind of size and power that could give either one of these guys huge problems if he’s able to land his big shots and avoid their own power shots.

Deontay won’t have much to worry about from Scott, because he doesn’t have much power to speak of, and he doesn’t sit down on his shots very much when fighting guys that can punch a little. In his loss to Chisora, Scott was backing up the entire time and sitting on the ropes just trying to block shots. It was a bad strategy to use against a guy like Chisora, and it’s not surprising that Scott was stopped in the 6th. If Scott uses the same strategy against Deontay then you can expect the fight to be over in the 1st round. Deontay punches too hard for a fighter like Scott to go into his shell by standing with his back against the ropes letting Deontay tee off on him the same way he did in his 1st round knockout win over Audley Harrison last year in April.

If Deontay can capture the WBC heavyweight title this year then it’ll set him up with a big money unification bout against IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, who has already talked about wanting to capture the WBC title so that he could have all of the major World titles in his possession.