I find it unbelievable that Wilder still doesn't have a mandatory when it was 6 months ago when Povetkin tested positive for ostarine that cancelled his fight with Stiverne. 6 months aren't enough for WBC to find a new mandatory challenger for their heavyweight champion? Rumors were floating around that Wilder's next mando will be Stiverne which would be a sad joke. Stiverne is ranked #1 by WBC so that is still possible. One can only wonder how Stiverne got ranked #1 after all his last fight was in 2015 against a journeyman, Derric Rossy, and the Haitian-Canadian is inactive for 18 months and also tested positive for a banned substance last year. Luis Ortiz is ranked #2 which is another joke, obviously he should be ranked higher than Stiverne, but I guess WBC wants no part of the Wilder - Ortiz fight. The other possibility that Wilder's mandatory will be the winner of the Helenius - Chisora fight which will be for the WBC Silver title. That would be another weak mando since Chisora is coming from a loss, while Helenius recently had 2 consecutive wins against two absolute tomato cans, he fell short to Duhaupas, a gatekeeper prior to those fights. Helenius is ranked #24 by WBC currently, while he was never very good, he is even worse after his shoulder and hand surgeries.
The WBC doesn't seem care to hide the fact that they are protecting Wilder with their rankings. Whoever it will be, either a nonsensical Stiverne rematch or one of the gatekeepers Helenius or Chisora as the mandatory, it looks pretty bad on paper.
He should get an easy one after the murderer's row he's just been through. Washington was an extremely good fighter whose quality was demonstrated because he beat him from pillar to post the first 4 rounds. Wilder's nerves are still rattled from that one. They should make Wawrzyk or maybe Steve Gee mandatory. Actually, now that I think of it, he could fight them both back to back, sounds fair
Agreed. Good on Wilder for paying bummy mandatory fights step aside money so he can make a unifaction fight with Parker.. Lets wait and see if Parker has the same ambition to step up as Wilder.
Yeah the WBC is really a mess right now in the heavyweight division. To give some background, Wilder got injured after his fight with Arreola, and so it was supposed to be Stiverne vs. Povetkin for the "interim" WBC title. The winner would then fight wilder. At the same time there was also a Dillan Whyte. vs. Chisora match as a WBC eliminator. So presumably the winner (whyte) would get the next shot after the interim title winner. The problem is that the WBC withdrew WBC sanctioning following a failed Povetkin PED test before the bout. At the time Stiverne demanded an immediate shot at deontay. The WBC countered saying that the fight was cancelled and so neither fighter was the "interim title" holder, therefore Stiverne still needed to actually fight and win before getting a title shot. Fast forward to weeks later, and for some odd reason (Don King maybe? *cough*) the WBC reversed itself and installed Stiverne as the mandatory. The best thing for fight fans imo is if the WBC scheduled Whyte (the eliminator winner) with Stiverne. If they did it way back then, we'd likely have a winner by now. If whyte won, a fight with Wilder in the UK would make sense, and provide more exposure for Wilder in that market. If stiverne won then he'd have more momentum than he had before in the past 2 years.
