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Chris Arreola will face Bermane Stiverne in a WBC heavyweight eliminator on the Hopkins-Cloud card on March 9 in Brooklyn. HBO is televising the event.
Arreola (35-2, 30 KO) and Stiverne (22-1-1, 20 KO) have been lined up to face one another for a while now. Stiverne's promoter Don King initially won a purse bid with an absurd $1.1 million offer in September, and then defaulted on the bid, to the surprise of no one. Arreola's promoters at Goossen Tutor then got the fight, as he had put in the second-highest bid at $550,000.
The fight was then slated to be part of the Ward-Pavlik card, which was canceled after Ward suffered a shoulder injury. With nowhere else to put the fight, and King being part of the Hopkins-Cloud event, this makes as much sense as anything, really.
Al Haymon prospect Keith Thurman is also expected to be part of the bill in a welterweight or junior middleweight fight.