Fans excited about heavyweight title bout in Las Vegas

Two big men with bad intentions will be standing toe to toe (at least for a little while) at the MGM Grand on Saturday night. They will be trying hard to knock each other’s block off. Bobbing and weaving are strictly optional.

These are men they call heavyweight boxers.

One is an American, from Alabama. The other is sort of an American. He was born in Haiti, moved to Miami, moved again to Montreal.

When Bermane — pronounced Berman, as in Chris “He Could Go All The Way” Berman — Stiverne knocked out Chris Arreola to win the WBC heavyweight title last year, the announcers said he was Haiti’s first heavyweight champ. And then they flashed the Canadian flag next to his name, as they did when Lennox Lewis was boxing the ears off of guys with bad intentions.

Anyway, a lot of American fight fans and boxing experts are said to be getting excited about Bermane Stiverne vs. Deontay Wilder here on Saturday night.

One such expert, Showtime Boxing’s Al Bernstein, who makes his home in Las Vegas and sometimes sings songs at the Bootlegger when he’s not analyzing pugilists with bad intentions, said mine was the first of about 15 interview requests he would get to on Monday.

Al said that was a lot of requests for a heavyweight fight involving an American and a sort-of American. He said this should be an excellent fight, or at least an action-packed one, and that he couldn’t remember the last time he analyzed an excellent, action-packed heavyweight title fight involving Americans, or sort-of Americans.

Probably Holyfield-Bowe I, he said, and that was in 1992.

Lately, Wladimir Klitschko has been dominating the heavyweight division from eastern Europe. I think he has had 422 title defenses, with most shown in the wee hours of the morning.

As Bernstein said, a Klitschko brother is perfectly capable of attracting 50,000 people to a soccer stadium in Germany to watch big men express bad intentions. But that doesn’t resonate with American fight fans, regardless of how ruggedly handsome “Dr. Steelhammer” is, or how many languages he speaks, or how many times he has fought Lamon Brewster.

Maybe if he moved to Cedar Rapids. As Al Bernstein says, we’re sort of jingoistic when it comes to our heavyweight boxers.

“These are two heavy hitters who will produce a slugfest that is not likely to go the distance,” Bernstein said of Stiverne vs. the other guy with the undefeated record. “I’m 99 percent sure it won’t be a hugfest.”

Stiverne is coming off back-to-back wins over Arreola, the second of which was fairly action-packed for a fight between heavyweights of this era. Arreola seemed to have landed the bigger shots before Stiverne put something behind that stinging left jab of his early in the sixth round. That something was a right hand that landed flush on Arreola’s temple.

The other guy, Wilder, who is from Tuscaloosa, Ala., is 32-0. His wins have mostly come against Hunt and Del Monte and Contadina, or opponents that resemble his hometown Crimson Tide’s nonconference football schedule, though Florida Atlantic and Western Carolina could probably beat up some of the tomato cans Wilder has beaten up.

So maybe these guys are exciting fighters, or maybe they were just born at the right time, which is to say when Wladimir Klitschko is dominating the heavyweight division from eastern Europe while learning to speak new languages.

After Al Bernstein and I chatted about heavyweight boxing and how many games the Cubs might win this season — and how the UNLV basketball team seems to play defense the way Rocky Balboa played it — I asked him the question I always ask when up-and-coming American heavyweights are talked about, or when big guys with bad intentions of whom the casual fan hasn’t heard are talked about.

Could either one beat Ron Lyle?

Ron Lyle killed a guy once. He was born at the wrong time, which in the case of big American prizefighters possessing bad intentions was 1941. That put him in Ali’s prime, and Smokin’ Joe Frazier’s prime, and Big George Foreman’s prime. Or at least Foreman’s first prime.

(On the other hand, Duane Bobick of Minnesota was born in 1950. It didn’t matter that much.)

Lyle fought with Jerry Quarry and Oscar Bonavena and Jimmy Ellis and Jimmy Young (twice) and Ali. And Earnie Shavers and Big George Foreman and Joe Bugner and Gerry Cooney. Lyle beat Bonavena, Ellis, Shavers and Bugner. He did not beat the others. He did not beat George Foreman at the old Caesars Palace Sports Pavilion in 1976.

But he knocked Big George down in the fourth round.

And then Big George knocked Lyle down.

And then Ron Lyle got up and knocked George Foreman down again.

This was all in the fourth round, when sweat flew off Afros.

This is how the story was retold on Lyle’s Wikipedia biography: “At one point he hit Foreman with a staggering body punch that almost made (Foreman’s) trunks fall off.”

Now that’s a body shot.

They were two big men, though perhaps not the baddest men on the planet — they weren’t even fighting for a title. They were just two American heavyweights with the baddest of intentions. They gave Bermane Stiverne and Deontay Wilder something to shoot for on Saturday night.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.