Can Arreola fill the heavyweight void?

Can Arreola fill the heavyweight void?


By Doug Fischer

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This content is protected

When Chris Arreola steps into the ring to battle Travis Walker on Saturday in Ontario, Calif., he’ll carry with him the hopes of proud Mexican fans yearning for a quality heavyweight of Mexican descent and American fans craving a legitimate U.S.-born contender.

A quick look at Arreola’s profile reveals considerable potential for fame and
fortune in a sport that’s starved for stars and bona fide attractions. At 27,
he’s young by heavyweight standards. He’s undefeated, boasting a 25-0 (22 knockouts)
record. And he possesses an aggressive, crowd-pleasing style rarely seen in big
men.

He also has personality. Arreola’s not only fan friendly in the ring, but outside
of it. The L.A.-born contender is affable, articulate and funny, the kind of fighter
boxing writers like to interview and fight fans want to approach and root for.
And let’s not forget his ethnic background. Arreola is Mexican-American. Boxing
has always aroused nationalistic passions, and fans of Mexican descent are
arguably the most loyal.

Arreola appears to be a boxing goldmine, but the jury is still out on whether he can live up to the expectations of hardcore fans and the media.

Despite his youth, sparkling record and proven toughness in a number of
entertaining shootouts with fellow heavyweight hopefuls, Arreola has shown an
occasional tendency to under train and come into even nationally televised fights
overweight.

After weighing 239 pounds for his impressive showing against the previously
undefeated Chazz Witherspoon in June, Arreola tipped the scales at a
disappointing 258, a career high, in his very next fight just two months ago.

Although his fight with Walker, an aggressive 6-foot-5 Adonis with a 28-1-1 (22 KOs)
record, appears to be a good scrap on paper, many boxing insiders will pay more
attention to Arreola’s weight at Friday’s weigh-in than Saturday’s HBO-televised co-featured fight at the new Citizens Business Bank Arena.

One would think this scrutiny, coupled with fighting at home (Ontario is near
his hometown of Riverside) and having to weigh-in the day after Thanksgiving,
would only add more anxiety to an already stressful situation, but Arreola
seemed unfazed when asked about his weight -- which he expects to be in the low
240s -- and fighting on Thanksgiving weekend.

“Weighing in the day after Thanksgiving hasn’t really entered my mind,” Arreola
told THE RING on Wednesday. “To be honest, my family never really celebrated
Thanksgiving when I was growing up. It was just a day off from school. We’d go
shopping and get tamales and that’s it. I didn’t have a big, formal dinner
with all the trimmings on Thanksgiving until I was 15 or 16 years old, when I
visited a friend’s house.

“So it’s not a big deal to me. I’ll eat, but I won’t go crazy with the food.”

Arreola has put in an intense seven-week camp, 4 1/2 of which were spent
in Big Bear Lake, Calif., the mountain resort town where a dozen world
champions have trained over the years and the site where the young heavyweight
learned how to prepare like a professional as one of Hasim Rahman’s sparring
partners a few years ago.

As Rahman, the WBC titleholder at the time, trained for his defense against
Oleg Maskaev, Arreola observed and experienced first-hand how a former champion
prepared his body and mind for his opponent.

Inspired, Arreola remained in Big Bear to train for his own fight against
then-unbeaten fellow Southern Californian Damian “Bolo” Wills on the undercard
of the Carlos Baldomir-Floyd Mayweather Jr. welterweight title bout in
November of 2006. The fight, which Arreola won by a seventh-round TKO in the best
fight on the HBO Pay-Per-View televised card, would be a turning point in his
career.

Prior to the Wills fight, Arreola was considered to be a club fighter -- at best.

Promoter Dan Goossen, and later manager Al Haymon, saw potential in the raw
fighting spirit Arreola showed early in his career, but skeptics within the
industry were many because of the woeful shape in which he often showed up. Arreola’s
2004 bout with tough journeyman Domonic Jenkins was a perfect example of what
made Arreola both a potential prospect and suspect.

Jenkins, a dangerous journeyman who was coming off a knockout of former
national amateur champ Malcolm Tann, went toe to toe with Arreola, breaking the
Arreola’s nose and busting up his face. But Arreola sucked it up, battled back,
and wore down the veteran gate-keeper to a fifth-round stoppage. The hard-fought
victory should have turned heads, but his weight (255 pounds) and blubbery
physique gave him the look of a Raiders Nation Michelin Man, not a future
heavyweight contender.

However, Arreola continued to win against solid, but second-tier opposition, his
weight fluctuating in the mid- to high-240s, going into the Wills showdown.

After his first grueling camp in Big Bear, Arreola was so fit for Wills (he
weighed in at a career-low 229 pounds) that many members of the Southern
California boxing press didn’t recognize the trimmed down heavyweight when they
spotted him with his trainer, Henry Ramirez, inside the Mandalay Bay’s media
center the day before the fight.

 

Arreola began to change the minds of some of his doubters with the dominating
manner in which he halted Wills, who held a 21-0-1 record at the time. He
followed the Wills performance with seven victories, including an impressive
eighth-round knockout of Tann on Showtime last year and his disqualification win
over Witherspoon. The bruising three-round DQ could have easily gone into the
books as a technical stoppage had Witherspoon’s cornermen not entered the ring
following Arreola’s second knockdown of the then 23-0 Philadelphia prospect.

Arreola’s HBO debut was impressive enough for some observers to elevate him to
“contender” status or recognize him as America’s best young heavyweight.

However, Arreola’s weight and flabby appearance for his last fight, a
three-round beatdown of Israel Garcia, again raised concerns and skepticism
among the more critical members of the boxing fraternity.

Arreola admitted his lack of training and focus for the Versus-televised bout
shortly after the fight. He even encouraged some boxing writers to criticize him
in print.

The lackluster training camp for Garcia, which Arreola abandoned for a number of
days just a week before the bout, prompted Ramirez to return to Big Bear for the
Walker fight. It was a move the young heavyweight did not protest, knowing that
the boxing press would scrutinize his weight more than ever for Saturday’s bout
and recognizing that Walker, who has never appeared out of shape even when
tipping the scales at 250 pounds, is a threat.

“I can’t deny that my weight is an issue,” Arreola said. “I’ve made it an issue,
but it won’t be for this fight and I’m going to try not to make an issue from
now on.

“For this fight I didn’t worry about how much I weighed, I just focused on
getting in the kind shape I need to be in to impose my will on Travis Walker and
to make him fight my fight for 12 rounds.”

Arreola is expecting a challenge from the 29-year-old Houstonian.

“I’ve seen him fight many times,” Arreola said. “He’s like me. He’s got a lot of
heart and the will to win. He’s going to keep coming. I know that. I respect
that about him.

“I’m going to have to break him and take that will away from him.”

To help prepare his fighter for what might be a grueling battle of attrition,
Ramirez put together a strong lineup of sparring partners, including an old foe
in “Bolo” Wills, two prospects in 13-0 Travis Kauffman and 14-1-1 Teke Oruh, and
a veteran gym fighter in Cisse Salif.

“They weren’t just sparring partners,” Arreola said. “They were my competitors.
They beat the crap out of me on some days, and that’s exactly what I wanted;
it’s what I needed.

“I did my pushups and all the other strengthening exercises, too. I stayed
strong in this camp because I know Walker is strong, but I’m not going to allow
him to manhandle me. I’m not going to be pushed around.”

Based on the heavy hands and aggressive styles of both heavyweights, as well as
their recent comments -- Walker has vowed to stop Arreola inside of five rounds --
fans can expect a barnburner while it lasts.

And that’s just as meaningful to Arreola as being the first successful
heavyweight of Mexican descent. Winning the world title is important to Arreola,
but so is winning fans.

“I pride myself in being in entertaining fights,” he said. “There’s a huge void
that I can fill in boxing. Right now, there aren’t a lot of promising American
heavyweights, and there aren’t a lot of exciting fighters in any weight class. I
want to be that heavyweight that everyone wants to see fight. I want to bring
the excitement back to the heavyweight division, and back to boxing.

“Nobody should be talking about Evander Holyfield fighting. Fans should be
talking about the new generation.”

The Arreola-Walker is an IBF title elimination bout, meaning the winner
will gain “mandatory challenger” status with the sanctioning organization, thus
guaranteeing a shot at IBF belt-holder Wladimir Klitschko sometime next year. If
Arreola beats Walker, as he is favored to do, fans will debate whether he’s ready to face the likes of THE RING’s no. 1 contender, but they will definitely be talking about him.

“I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t added importance and added pressure because
of the IBF ranking on the line,” Ramirez told THE RING, “but we can’t afford to
think about the future. We can’t get ahead of ourselves. There’s a big strong,
athletic guy in front of us Saturday and I know we’re going to see the best of
Travis Walker because he feels slighted that he’s the underdog. I know he’s
motivated to beat Chris because they have the same promoter and he feels that he
should be promoted the way Chris has been.”

However, Arreola says he isn’t feeling any added pressure.

He says the possibility of fighting Klitschko next year is more fuel for his
fire – like fighting in front of a hometown crowd and developing into a
heavyweight that Mexican fans can be proud of. It’s just another reason for
Arreola to fight his heart out.

“All of this – the expectations, the doubters, the focus on my weight, the title
eliminator – is more motivating to me than pressure,” he said. “Being the first
Mexican heavyweight champ and making history makes this about pride. I carry it
on my back, but it’s not a burden.

“I want to prove the people who believed in me right and I want to make my
doubters regret doubting me. I want to remind fans that boxing ain’t a body
builder sport.

“But most of all, I want to remind fans that boxing is the most exciting sport
there is, and it’s a gentleman’s sport. It’s a sport where we’re going to beat
the crap out of each other and afterwards we’re going to shake hands. That’s
what I love most about boxing.”
If Arreola can keep winning and fighting in exciting fashion, that’s what fans – Mexican, American, or otherwise – are going to love about him.