Las Vegas, NV (SportsNetwork.com) – Deontay Wilder became the first American to win a heavyweight title in more than eight years when he earned a lopsided decision over Bermane Stiverne for the WBC belt on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
In a fight that wasn’t expected to go the distance, Wilder (33-0) seemed in control for most of the 12 rounds against Stiverne (24-2-1) at MGM Grand.<\/p>\n
The scorecards reflected that. Wilder easily won on each of them, capturing his first major title by scores of 120-107, 119-108 and 118-109.<\/p>\n
It was the first time in his 33 bouts as a professional that Wilder fought past the fourth round and the first time he didn’t knock his opponent out.<\/p>\n
Wilder, known as the “Bronze Bomber” for the medal he won at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, is the first American heavyweight champion since Shannon Briggs held the WBO title from 2006-07.<\/p>\n
The 29-year-old from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, showed why each of his previous bouts ended in early knockouts. He stunned Wilder with a combination in the second round that started with a hard right hand and was interrupted by the bell.<\/p>\n
Stiverne tackled Wilder into the corner as he went down, though Wilder wasn’t credited with a knockdown.<\/p>\n
He jawed at Stiverne as they were down on the mat.<\/p>\n
In his third bout in 10 months, Wilder rarely looked in trouble. Stiverne had him up against the ropes after a good left hand in the sixth round and Wilder later withstood a good combo.<\/p>\n
But he came back with a combo that shook up Stiverne in the seventh — a jab followed by a hard, straight right on the chin. Stiverne stumbled into the ropes later in the round after coming up short on a punch.<\/p>\n
Stiverne, 36, fought for the first time since his sixth-round TKO of Chris Arreola last May 10 gave him claim to the vacant WBC belt.<\/p>\n
The title had been vacated in December 2013 when Vitali Klitschko retired to pursue political ambitions in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
On the undercard, Leo Santa Cruz stopped Jesus Ruiz in the eighth round to retain the WBC world super bantamweight title.<\/p>\n
Santa Cruz (29-0-1, 17 KOs) stunned Ruiz (33-6-5) with a right hand and had him against the ropes when the fight was stopped. It was his fourth successful defense of the title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Las Vegas, NV (SportsNetwork.com) – Deontay Wilder became the first American to win a heavyweight title in more than eight years when he earned a lopsided decision over Bermane Stiverne for the WBC belt on Saturday night. In a fight that wasn’t expected to go the distance, Wilder (33-0) seemed in control for most of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boxing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28599\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}