Deontay Wilder, with a broken hand and torn muscle, crushes Chris Arreola to retain WBC world title

Deontay Wilder shook off injury to retain his World Boxing Council heavyweight world title Saturday as bloodied challenger Chris Arreola failed to answer the bell for the ninth round.

After breaking his right hand, Deontay Wilder, left, fought entirely with his left but still had far too much for Chris Arreola. David A. Smith / Getty Images

Deontay Wilder shook off injury to retain his World Boxing Council heavyweight world title on Sunday morning as bloodied challenger Chris Arreola failed to answer the bell for the ninth round.

In front of his home fans in Birmingham, Alabama, Wilder remained undefeated in 37 fights, notching his 36th victory inside the distance with the technical knockout.

Arreola, 35, had absorbed immense punishment when his corner told the referee they wanted to end the fight.

He was bleeding from a cut on the bridge of his nose opened in the first round, and his left eye was nearly swollen shut.

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Wilder, 30, dropped Arreola in the fourth round, and after the challenger made the count of eight, assuring the referee he was good to go on, Wilder rocked him again at the bell.

The win looked all the more impressive when Wilder said in a post-fight interview he had broken his right hand and torn a muscle in his right arm.

“I wanted to give you guys a knockout, but I broke my hand and I tore a muscle,” Wilder told the in-ring interviewer as a cornerman applied an ice pack to his right biceps.

From the fifth round on he barely used his right, but punished Arreola with stinging lefts, sending him wobbling back to his corner at the end of the seventh.

Arreola, whose record now stands at 36-5 with one draw and 31 knockouts, fell to 0-3 in heavyweight title fights, all three of them stoppages.

He took the fight on short notice after Wilder’s scheduled title defence against Alexander Povetkin in May was undone by Povetkin’s positive test for meldonium.

The cancellation of that bout has resulted in lawsuits from the Povetkin and Wilder camps, but the champion showed no sign of the distractions in the ring.

He was quick to call out the other heavyweight world title holders, saying he would take on Britain’s International Boxing Federation champion Anthony Joshua or the winner of a title rematch between Britain’s Tyson Fury and Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko.

“My goal is to unify the division,” Wilder said. “Whoever’s got those belts, that’s who I want.”

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