WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman says the October 15th fight between Deontay Wilder and Robert Helenius is a semi-final eliminator, and the winner will face Andy Ruiz Jr for the final eliminator to determine the mandatory for champion Tyson Fury.
Ruiz Jr (35-2, 22 KOs) already won his semi-final eliminator last Sunday night, beating Luis Ortiz by a 12 round unanimous decision in Los Angeles.
Wilder (42-2-1, 41 KOs) is the favorite in his October 15th fight against Helenius (31-3, 20 KOs) on FOX Sports pay-per-view at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
However, it’s anyone’s guess that Wilder will go along with the program and agree to fight Ruiz Jr if he gets by Helenius.
The thing is, Wilder is above needing to fight in title eliminators to get a title shot against the champions.
When Wilder picked his former sparring partner Helenius as his next opponent, it wasn’t with the idea in mind of fighting him in a WBC title eliminator.
It was the World Boxing Council that came along and made the Wilder vs. Helenius fight a title eliminator after they’d already made the fight.
Unfortunately for the WBC, Wilder isn’t going to be railroaded into fighting needless eliminators to get a title shot against Fury. Deontay doesn’t need to compete in title eliminators to get a crack at a belt.
That’s why it’s going to be interesting to see if Wilder goes along with the WBC’s program to fight Ruiz should he get past Helenius on Helenius on October 15th.
Given how poor Ruiz looked against Luis Ortiz and how little Wilder has to gain from fighting him, he’d be better off telling the WBC to forget their focus on trying to set up a final eliminator.
In other words, if Wilder beats Helenius, he’ll go his own way, and the WBC can make Ruiz Jr the mandatory to Fury by default. Again, it was never Wilder’s intention to fight Helenius for the sake of a WBC title eliminator. He just wanted to fight him as a tune-up, and it was the WBC that came along and made it a title eliminator.
You can argue that it was a clever thing for the WBC to do because if the Wilder-Helenius winner goes along with the wishes of the sanctioning body, they’ll take the fight against Ruiz and then challenge Fury or whoever holds the belt.
