Former WBC heavyweight champion Deontay ‘Bronze Bomber’ came in a very slender 214 1/2 lbs, and his opponent Robert Helenius 253 1/4 pounds on Friday at their weigh-in for Saturday’s scheduled 12 round fight on FITE PPV FOX Sports PPV at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Wilder wasn’t kidding when he said he was planning on coming in lighter for this fight, but let’s just hope for his sake that he doesn’t live to regret it.
By coming in so low in weight, Wilder (42-2-1, 41 KOs) is taking a gamble that his speed & endurance will be enough to compensate for the massive size advantage that the 6’6″, 253 1/2 pound Helenius (31-3, 20 KOs) will be enjoying.
Helenius will have a 39 3/4 pound weight advantage over Deontay, giving a huge edge over the ‘Bronze Bomber.’ If Helenius chooses to use his weight to lean & maul Wilder as Tyson Fury did in their last two fights together, it will be a bad night for Deontay.
Wilder has been knocked out in his last two fights, and it’s critical that he not get stopped again. He’s got to break his losing streak on Saturday night because if he loses to Helenius, the three years that he’s been talking about having left in the game might need to be altered a little.
Caleb Plant vs. Anthony Dirrell weights
In other weights on the card, former IBF super middleweight champion Caleb ‘Sweethands’ Plant (21-1, 12 KOs) weighed in at 167 1/4 lbs, and Anthony Dirrell (34-2, 25 KOs) scaled in at 167 3/4 pounds for their co-feature bout.
Dirrell, 37, was giving Plant a lot of grief during their face-off, telling him that he was told that he’d been hurt in training camp by a middleweight sparring partner.
Interestingly, Plant didn’t deny that he’d been hurt in camp, and he seemed choked up when being interviewed after.
What Dirrell said to Plant seemed to have really gotten to him because he was unglued in the same way that he’d been when Canelo Alvarez shoved him & then punched him during their kickoff press conference last year.
Thankfully, today’s brief war of words didn’t result in ‘Sweethands’ Plant getting slugged by Dirrell because the last thing the card needs is for Caleb to be injured a day before the fight.
With the main event between Wilder and Helenius expected to be a mismatch, it’s important that the Plant vs. Dirrell fight take place because it could save the card from being a disappointment.
