There is no way I'd want to waste an hour of my life watching that again but I don't accept it was fixed. I do think that Wilder has his sights firmly set on the Joshua payday, and everything is geared to avoiding any risk of losing a fight and blowing that payday. I think the intention was always to fight Stiverne next and the longer they could delay that fight, the less chance there would be of having to fight someone else before meeting AJ.montrealsuper wrote:Look at the performance again, if you can sit through watching a scripted beatdown. Lackluster Stiverne didn't try to win. He stood there like a heavy bag and ate the shots. The smoking gun came months later at the press conference for Wilder vs Molina where Don King, who controlled Molina and was conveniently rewarded for scripting Stiverne with scoring Wilder's first defence opponent, one dubious, minimally talented patsy named Eric Molina. King actually said at the press conference that Stiverne "transferred" the title to Wilder and that this fight Wilder vs Molina would not be like that. Implying this fight would be a real fight. "Transferred." Think about that word. It obviously meant that the "fight" was a business transaction and the WBC title was transferred from Stiverne to Wilder. Now on top of that, Stiverne is STILL AROUND as the WBC no. 1.
Haymon is a known fixer (Malignaggi said he can fix or manipulate "anything"). Do you think for one second he would allow Wilder, his last desperation hope, to lose? Hell no. And Stiverne is old and finished and can EASILY be bought. Stiverne as WBC champ is as bad as Charles Martin or Alex Zolkin -
ZERO sellers, zero potential, zero chance of sustained longevity, zero hope to evolve into a $$$maker. Wilder at one point had potential and hope to be a star though he's actually regressed with each fight. But Haymon has no other options to create a star so he's all in on this big fraud from Alabama.
One thing that was going to delay the unification was that Joshua was intending to fight Ortiz in a mandatory but now Ortiz has been removed from the equation. In theory the WBA could replace him with Ustinov or someone else nobody wants to see, but it might just mean the WBA get onboard with the idea of holding the unification sooner rather than later. Either way it won't have made Wilder's wait any longer and might have made it shorter.