By Brent Matteo Alderson

There are initial-plans in place for heavyweight slugger Chris Arreola to face WBO/IBF heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko in the summer.  At the conclusion of Toney-Oquendo, Dan Goosen commented, “If you sat us all down here, manager, trainer, fighter, we’d all say Klitschko makes a lot of sense right now if the fight can be made under reasonable terms.  We’ve said all along that 2009 was going to be Cristobal’s year and we haven’t swayed from that.  We’re ready and boxing needs a tornado like Chris.” 

Later on in the night, BoxingScene.com accompanied Arreola and his team to the Chandelier Bar inside the Morongo Casino.  Arreola was with some friends, his trainer Henry Ramirez, and Wes Crockett, the Al Haymon associate who discovered him when he was fighting on club shows.

Arreola was in good spirits throughout the evening and happy about the early Christmas gift he bought for himself with the reported $250,000 dollar payday he earned for the Walker bout, “I bought a fully loaded Ford F-150.  It’s beautiful; it’s raised with 22 inch rims.  I went to the dealer and the guy treated me different.  He was like, do you want to trade in your other two cars for a new F-150 and I was like, no, I want to buy it straight out and he looked at me as though I wasn’t going to be able to do it until some other salesmen came up and told who I was and then he was like, can I get you anything else.”

Wes Crockett, a kind of talent-scout who initially brought Paul Williams and Arreola to Al Haymon’s attention, came to the Toney fight with a large group that included former USC football standout Mike Williams and a number of other close friends. Mike Williams and Arreola actually seemed to hit it off as the former college football star joked with Chris, “They say you’re going to be the first Mexican heavyweight champion, but with that big-ass nose, you might be black!” 

Later on in the night BoxingScene was involved in a round-table discussion with Mr. Crockett and he stated, “I’ve been fighting since I was five years old, and I knew when I saw Chris and Paul [Williams] that they were going to be champions, they both had the talent and they are both natural-born fighters, I could see it in their eyes. It’s done, Chris is fighting Klitschko on May 12 at the Staples Center, and it’s a done deal.” 

BoxingScene.com was astonished by the information and since it was received in a socially-intimate environment, Crockett was asked if the information could be reported and he responded, “I don’t give a f-ck, write what you want.”

A few moments later, Henry Ramirez had a smile on his face that was either from the sweet taste of corona or the thought of Arreola fighting for the heavyweight championship of the world and he proudly stated with a grin, “We are coming after Klitschko; we’re taking the fight to him!”     

News and Notes:

Toney received a gift decision.  Oquendo thoroughly out-boxed Toney and should have gotten the decision, but I guess every great deserves a free-bee and James got his last Saturday night.  Then again he already got one against Dave Tiberi in February of 1992.

Juan Carlos Gomez’s advisor, the young Akbar Muhammad called me earlier today to talk about the purse bid for Vitali Klitschko’s mandatory against Juan Carlos Gomez.  Akbar stated, “The purse bid was originally scheduled for December 19, but it’s been postponed until January 6.  Don King and Ahmet Öner of Arena promotions requested an extension, but the Klitschkos don’t want to do business with King.  K-2 promotions (the Klitschkos) will come up with enough money to get it, nobody can match K-2 and their bids, but King and Öner wanted to use the holidays to try to put some money together to get the fight.  The original bid for Klitschko-Povetikn was 13 million, and Povetkn was going to get 3.3 million Euros, and Juan Carlos is bigger than Povetkin in Germany, but Povetkin brought in some money with the Russian television rights so I think the bid should be at least in the high seven figures.”

Kahren Harutyunyan’s Art of Boxing Promotions has an excellent card coming up this Saturday at the Hollywood Park Casino.  It features Roman Karmazin and lots of local talent.  If you’re in Southern California, call (818) 749-1571 for tickets.

Brent Matteo Alderson, a graduate of UCLA, has been part of the staff at BoxingScene.com since 2004. Alderson's published work has appeared in publications such as Ring Magazine, KO, World Boxing, Boxing 2008, and Latin Boxing Magazine. Alderson has also been featured on the ESPN Classic television program “Who’s Number One?”  Please e-mail any comments to BoxingAficionado@aol.com