Canadians Antonin Decarie and Bermane Stiverne will be in the boxing spotlight this weekend.
Both will be underdogs on the road as they battle tough opponents as part of a split-venue triple-header broadcast by the HBO specialty channel on Saturday night.
The feature of the night has 38-year-old Sergio Martinez (50-2-2) returning to his native Argentina for the first time in 11 years to defend his middleweight title against hard-hitting Briton Martin Murray (25-0-1).
The co-feature on that card has Decarie (27-1-0), of Laval, Que., against Argentina’s Luis Carlos Abregu (34-1-0) in a battle of highly ranked contenders. Both are looking for a future shot at the WBC welterweight title held by pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather Jr.
A crowd of 45,000 is expected at a Buenos Aires soccer stadium for the fights.
Montreal’s Stiverne (22-1-1) made a bold threat to decapitate American Chris Arreola (35-2-0) in their heavyweight elimination bout at the Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario, Calif. The winner becomes mandatory challenger for WBC champion Vitali Klitschko.
However, the 41-year-old Klitschko is now a member of parliament in Ukraine and is uncertain to fight again. If he opts to retire, the winner between Arreola and Stiverne, the WBC’s first and second-ranked contenders, could become interim champion.
The stocky, six-foot-two Stiverne has a modest resume of fights and Arreola should be his toughest opponent to date. But the Haiti native is not lacking in confidence.
"I’m not here to knock you out Chris, I’m here to chop your head off," the 34-year-old said at a news conference this week. "That’s what we do where I’m from.
"I’m from Haiti. You cannot break my will."
The 32-year-old Arreola, from East Los Angeles, is in his first bout since a first-round knockout of Eric Molina in February, 2012. His only losses were in world title bouts — to Klitschko in 2009 and to Tomasz Adamek the following year.
"I like that you want to chop my head off," he told Stiverne. "He made it a fight with those words.
"Now I have fire in my belly more than before. I’ll knock him out, but I’ll make sure he goes home to his family."
Decarie, 30, is in deep against 29-year-old Abregu. But the stylish welterweight proved he can win on the road when he handed heavily favoured Alex Perez a first defeat with a sixth-round TKO in Mashantucket, Conn., in his last outing on Sept. 29.
His promoter Yvcon Michel fears he may need another knockout to beat Abregu in Argentina.
"I think it will take a KO for Antonin or it will be difficult," Michel wrote on Twitter. "But I hope I’m wrong."
Decarie’s lone defeat was in France in 2010 when he lost a 12-round decision to Souleymane M’baye for the interim WBA title.