By Edward Chaykovsky
WBC heavyweight Deontay Wilder (35-0, 34KOs) is looking forward to making a world title defense in January.
Wilder saw action three times in 2015. He captured the WBC championship with a twelve round decision over Bermane Stiverne in January. He came back in June to score a knockout victory over Eric Molina in nine rounds. Another voluntary defense was made last month when he stopped French contender Johann Duhaupas in eleven rounds.
Wilder's mandatory challenger is Olympic gold medal winner Alexander Povetkin, who returns next month in Russia against Polish giant Mariusz Wach.
In a recent Instagram post, top contender Bryant Jennings (19-1) gave the illusion that he was possibly facing Wilder on January 9th. Jennings' promoter, Gary Shaw, has denied that a fight with Wilder is being negotiated.
Wilder says Jennings is a guy who is only looking for a payday and not an opportunity. Some critics will agree with Wilder's opinions. Jennings was recently offered a fight with Luis Ortiz on the Golovkin-Lemieux HBO pay-per-view but priced himself out. An April fight with Wladimir Klitschko hit a few stumbling blocks over money and nearly fell apart at one point.
"Jennings, he's a type of guy that looks for the money instead of the opportunity," Wilder said to Alabama.com. "I've always talked about that I like guys who look for the opportunity instead of the money."
"He knows he can't beat me. My style, my skill level is way beyond him. When he fought Klitschko, he proved that he could survive. That's not what a champion is made of, not just to survive but also win. But that's one of my U.S. rivals and I would love to get one of my U.S. rivals out of the way for sure, so it could so happen to be him. There's a lot of great guys out there so we're looking to see what happens."
