Deontay Wilder wants quick KO on Saturday against Gavern

By T.Baker - 08/14/2014 - Comments

This Saturday night #1 WBC Deontay Wilder (31-0, 31 KOs) will be putting his guarantee world title shot against Bermane Stiverne at risk when he faces 37-year-old high level journeyman Jason Gavern (25-16-4, 11 KOs) in a 10 round bout at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.

If Deontay loses to Gavern, then he won’t be getting a shot at the WBC title later this year. You have to wonder what Stiverne is thinking about this fight. Is he hoping Deontay will lose or is he praying that he’ll get rid of Gavern so that the two of them can meet in November for a showdown?

It would definitely make things easier for Stiverne if Deontay loses, because he would then only need to best Bryant Jennings in his next title defense, and Jennings looked hardly impressive recently in defeating Mike Perez in a listless performance.

I am ready and excited to prove to everybody, my fans and haters that I will eventually be the champion,” Deontay said. “I don’t want him to feel comfortable. I want to get in and get out. I am only looking through him. My prize is to fight for the world title and in order to be able to do that I must get through my opponent on Saturday.”

Gavern will be in the role of a spoiler on Saturday night. If he can get lucky and land something big, he might potentially score a knockout over Deontay and ruin his chances of a world title shot. It’s not very likely because Gavern will need to be able to get the stoppage quickly before the much bigger, faster, stronger and more athletic Deontay lands too many of his hard punches. Gavern has a good chin, but he can be knocked out early as we saw with his 1st round stoppage loss to Amir Mansour last year.

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Deontay could still wind up looking bad even if he wins the fight if Gavern is able to stick around and upstage him by playing to the StubHub crowd with his clowning antics. Gavern likes to clown around during his fights. He could potentially win over the crowd if Deontay doesn’t get to him quickly in the first couple of rounds. It would be better for Deontay if he shut Gavern down as fast as possible because this fight could get ugly if Gavern makes it past the 4th.