Arreola’s heavyweight nightmare continues

Photo: Big Joe Miranda / BigJoesPics.com

What a difference a year makes!

This time last year Cris Arreola was still an undefeated heavyweight prospect. He had the world at his feet and was being touted as one of the leaders of the new school of heavyweight boxing and even though few gave him a chance against Vitali Klitschko, one of the most dominant heavyweights in recent history he would at least make it competitive.

What followed was a 10 round battering that left Arreola’s face swollen ad bloody before his corner did the right thing and pulled him. Nobody could hold it against him as Klitschko wasn’t a champion for no reason but his performance against Tomasz Adamek in April could be.

There had been stories that Arreola had been in and out of the gym prior to the fight and had even missed weeks at a time and it showed in the fight as when the bell rang after the 12th round it was Adamek and the Polish contingent that he had brought with him that were celebrating, even worse on Arreola’s home turf.

This week in the run up to his fight with Manuel Quezada, Arreola has been banging his drum talking about redemption and how he is a new man and I, like many, genuinely believed him. He talked about going back to basics and rebuilding his career following those 2 losses and even his trainer Henry Ramirez lauded him for his new found commitment stating:

“He’s been there everyday and not been disappearing. This camp has been very consistent. I see him more focused in this camp. He’s been wanting to commit. Chris knows that his back is against the wall. It came from him that he wanted to work hard for this fight.”

Even though he weighed in at 256 he looked trimmer than usual but the weight was to tell as mid way through the fight he began to breath heavy as Quezada made the fight more competitive than I ad many had expected it to be. Arreola was breathing heavily through his mouth and although he scored 2 knock downs in the 9th round he would go onto lose the 10th to a man that was seemingly there for the taking.

He would score another knockdown in the 12th but in whole he just didn’t look impressive. It was thought he was hungry and ready to show he is still a force in the heavyweight division with an impressive performance but this wasn’t to be as he laboured to a win. He looked sluggish and sadly I think Arreola has found his level.

I don’t expect to see Arreola in the upper echelons of boxing for much longer, even his own team realise they will find it hard to get him there with promoter Dan Goosen stating after the fight:

“We’re going to keep him busy, HBO or not. We need to have him fight four or five times a year.”

It’s hard enough to make waves in the division with the ominous shadow of the Klitschko brothers looming large but if you are not on top of your game, the way Arreola doesn’t seem to be you have no chance. Arreola is a nice guy and more often than not fans seem to take to him but I think it is fair to say he is a B level fighter at best following this uncomfortable win.

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