The Hottest Boxing Storylines for the Week of June 14

Don't scare us like that, Deontay Wilder.

Wilder took down Eric Molina on Saturday for the first defense of his WBC Heavyweight Championship, but, boy, it wasn't as easy as everyone expected.

Did the Tuscaloosa, Alabama, native dodge a big-time bullet in his home state?

Nicholas Walters scored a clear but unimpressive win over Miguel Marriaga on Saturday night in New York City.

Can The Axe Man score a big fish for his next fight?

Vasyl Lomachenko, anyone?

We then turn our attention to the coming weekend, which is full of high-level boxing.

Adrien Broner and Shawn Porter meet on Premier Boxing Champions Saturday night.

Andre Ward returns to the ring at home against Paul Smith, and David Lemieux battles Hassan N'Dam for a vacant middleweight title.

That should satisfy your fix for the sweet science.

Let's get right to it.

These are the hottest boxing storylines for the busy week of June 14.

Did Deontay Wilder Dodge a Bullet?

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If you took the over in rounds between Wilder and Molina on Saturday night, you probably looked like a fool before the fight and laughed your way to the bank after. 

You had to dig deep into the bag to find many people who were willing to give Molina a shot of getting out of the first round, much less taking the WBC champion nine and rocking him back on his heels with a few quality power shots that had the whole state of Alabama on edge. 

Molina, brought in as a cheap, presumably no-hope challenger meant as fodder for a successful Wilder homecoming, didn't seem to get that memo. He proved to be far tougher than advertised; even while being dropped five times, he gave a good account of himself.

Wilder took care of business before a sold-out crowd at Bartow Arena on the campus of the University of Alabama-Birmingham—the first world title fight to ever take place in the state—but you get the sense that the final knockdown produced less elation than sighs of relief.

Maybe not from Wilder, who had the right to be thrilled and soak up the atmosphere, but from the people who have guided the American champion to the cusp of heavyweight immortality.

Molina was tough but limited.

What if it had been Bryant Jennings—the other top American big man who gave Wladimir Klitschko a tough night in April—on the other side of the ring?

How about mandatory challenger Alexander Povetkin?

Klitschko?

Tyson Fury?

Nobody is saying that we should jump off the Wilder train en masse after one underwhelming performance, but it raises questions about the future when the quality of opposition will drastically rise.

Maybe it was just a combination of factors—underestimating an opponent, the pressures of fighting at home—but you couldn't possibly say that Wilder did anything to raise his in-ring stock here.

The Battle of Ohio...in Las Vegas

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Broner and Porter are set to meet on PBC in what figures to be an exciting catchweight bout at 144 pounds Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Both Broner and Porter are Ohio born and bred—The Problem is from Cincinnati and Showtime hails from Akron—making the billing of their fight as the "Battle of Ohio" a logical marketing strategy.

Hosting that battle in Las Vegas, which, in case geography isn't your strongest suit, is thousands of miles from the Buckeye State, is another story altogether. 

Broner and Porter's shared Ohio heritage is about the only thing the two men have in common.

The Problem is young, brash and fly, as he's apt to say, presenting himself as the heir apparent to boxing's pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather Jr. He's won three world titles in as many weight divisions by his 25th birthday but rubs many the wrong way with his often immature and disrespectful antics.

Showtime Porter is a swarming former welterweight champion in his own right, but he comes without any of the baggage associated with his foot-in-mouth-prone opponent. He's the anti-Broner, and that subplot is one of the things that make this fight so intriguing.

It's a bit of a surprise that Broner would jump right back into the mix against a bigger pressure fighter after his last foray with that style at this weight ended with a thumping by Marcos Maidana.

The catchweight is designed to give Broner something of an advantage, though Porter claims he's not worried about dropping an additional three pounds, per Andreas Hale of the Ring Magazine.

Both men badly need this one to fully rebound from tough losses.

Broner has beaten three straight decent but unspectacular fighters since the loss to Maidana, and Porter has fought only once since dropping his title to Kell Brook, stopping late replacement Erick Bone in three rounds in March. 

Welcome Back, Andre Ward

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Ward will finally trade in the suit, tie and microphone from his HBO announcing gig to get back into trunks and gloves when he faces Paul Smith Saturday night at Oracle Arena in Oakland, California. 

It's the first fight for the super middleweight champion, who once sat just below Mayweather on most pound-for-pound lists, since an easy November 2013 decision win over Edwin Rodriguez.

Ward had been involved in extended litigation with late promoter Dan Goossen and his company in recent years, but a settlement was finally reached shortly after the veteran matchmaker's passing that allowed Ward to sign with Jay Z's Roc Nation Sports. 

Smith is best known for dropping a competitive title challenge against Arthur Abraham last September. He also dropped an immediate but less compelling rematch against the German-based champion and comes in off back-to-back defeats. 

This fight will take place at a catchweight of 172 pounds, and it should be treated as nothing more than what it represents.

It's a soft touch for Ward to get reacclimated to the fight game after another extended absence. He should win and win easily. Any other result would be a genuine surprise.

It's a shame that he's voluntarily ceded large segments of his fighting prime, preferring to spend them in courts rather than rings, and it's going to be a struggle to once again gain traction with so many big-name fighters equaling or surpassing him while he was gone.

But that's what happens when you're out of sight and mind.

Ward has never been a particularly big mainstream draw, but eventual showdowns with the Sergey Kovalevs and possibly Gennady Golovkins of the world seem the surest path to correct that problem.

Even so, it would be surprising to see one of those bouts happen until next year, given the possibility of ring rust and a need to get back into the swing of slinging and receiving live ammo. 

Lemieux, N'Dam and the Forgotten Title Fight

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Swallowed up in the hoopla of Brook vs. Porter and Ward's return is a darn interesting scrap between Lemieux and N'Dam at the Bell Centre in Montreal for a vacant 160-pound title.

The strap was vacated when Jermain Taylor's litany of legal problems finally made the continued pursuit of an in-ring career impossible, and it features a power puncher against a slick boxer in what could be the hidden gem of the weekend.

Lemieux has 31 knockouts among his 33 wins and recently signed a promotional deal with Oscar De La Hoya's Golden Boy Promotions. Without getting too far into the weeds here, the Canadian's former promoter Yvon Michel claims he still has a valid contract with the fighter and is suing Lemieux, Golden Boy and HBO, among others, for damages. 

For their part, Lemieux's representatives deny all those claims, but the lawsuit has given some people pause, and the fight will be on Fox Sports 2 in the United States rather than HBO.

N'Dam is a former middleweight champion.

He dropped the title to Peter Quillin at the Barclays Center in 2012 before winning three straight, including an eliminator over Curtis Stevens, to become the No. 1 contender. 

When Taylor vacated the belt, the IBF ordered N'Dam to face a top contender for the title. Several fighters passed on the chance, leaving Lemieux, who stopped veteran Gabriel Rosado his last time out, with the opportunity.

This is a classic boxer vs. puncher matchup.

What you see is what you get with Lemieux. He's going to come at you and try to get you out of there. He's light-years better than the guy who dropped back-to-back fights in 2011.

N'Dam was down six times against Quillin—though he won many of the rounds where he wasn't dropped—but he can box and move effectively, which he'll need to do to win this title. He can't let Lemieux's power become the decisive factor.

He wants this to look more like the Stevens fight and less like the Kid Chocolate one. 

So, while you're tuning in for the welterweights and the super middleweights, don't forget to check this one out.

It might well be the best fight of the night.

Lomachenko vs. Walters? Yes, Please!

Walters had a rough weekend in the Big Apple.

The undefeated Jamaican lost his featherweight championship on the scales Friday by failing to make 126 pounds, and he followed that up with a dreary unanimous decision over previously unbeaten Miguel Marriaga at the Theater at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night. 

The fight promised fireworks on paper but barely produced so much as the spark of a match in the ring. 

Walters seemed content to do just enough to win the fight, and Marriaga, who was the last man to defeat The Axe Man in the amateurs, seemed like the kid who wades out just a bit too deep in the pool before mommy needs to jump in for the save.

The crowd was dead, especially after a scintillating performance from rising Puerto Rican star Felix Verdejo to open up the HBO telecast, and neither man did anything to bring them back.

The fight just lacked any sort of urgency.

Walters missed weight by a full pound on Friday afternoon, and he came in as a functional welterweight at 146 pounds, per HBO's unofficial scale. That didn't help Marriaga, who had a reputation for big power but couldn't even ding his foe.

Lomachenko, the WBO's 126-pound champion, now looms large.

Top Rank CEO Bob Arum, who promotes both Walters and Lomachenko, didn't pull any punches when discussing the possibility of that match.

“That’s the fight I want to make,” Arum said, per Keith Idec of BoxingScene.com. “No f--king around—go right into that fight. People would love that fight. That would be a great f--king fight."

Indeed.

Make it happen, Uncle Bob.