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Chris Arreola is familiar with the big stage.

In fact, the Californian has already had two bites at the sport's biggest apple, first as a cocky 28-year-old against Vitali Klitschko and later as an overconfident 33-year-old against Bermane Stiverne.

Context reveals that neither opportunity left a satisfying taste.

But it's as a 35-year-old that the father of two kids -- including a softball-playing girl and a toddler-aged boy -- claims to have tapped into a hunger his earlier iterations hadn't had need to acknowledge.

And Arreola insists he'll take the newfound appetite with him into opportunity No. 3.

"I have a 14-year-old daughter that now understands what I do, more than when she was younger," he told CBS Sports. "Before I was just doing it to put a roof over her head and put a spoon in her mouth and keep her belly full. Now there's more to it.

"Now she understands the sacrifices that I'm doing and all the things that I'm doing. If I tell her to work hard, to train, to work out, how am I going to tell her that when I'm not doing it my damned self?

"I cannot tell my daughter to work hard, to train hard if I'm not doing it in my craft. That's why now I have to train hard. I have to do my all for my fights and my preparation because I can't look in my daughter's eyes and tell her 'Work hard' when she can be easily telling me, 'What about you?'"

Heavyweight championships, though, are not won on positive parenting alone.

Arreola acknowledges his status as a heavy underdog to WBC kingpin Deontay Wilder, whom he'll meet atop a two-bout Saturday night Fox broadcast (8 p.m. ET) from Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama.

The 6-foot-7 Wilder is 36-0 with 35 knockouts and has worn his crown for 18 months and defended three times since snatching it from the head of Stiverne - eight months after the Haitian had beaten Arreola for the second consecutive time, decking him twice while scoring a sixth-round TKO.

The champion will arrive with a four-inch edge in height and a seven-inch edge in reach, and it'll take a $5,000 outlay on Wilder to recoup a mere $100 profit at Bovada.lv -- while a $100 flyer on the challenger would yield a $1,400 windfall in the event of a big upset in the champion's home state.

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Chris Arreola is ready for his biggest challenge yet. Getty Images

"Arreola definitely has a style prone to a knockout," Wilder said.

"He's a pressure fighter who will come forward all night. That plays to my style. I love pressure fighters who give me a challenge. They keep me moving and thinking."

The fight was assembled after Wilder's planned trip to Russia was scuttled when No. 1 contender Alexander Povetkin failed a drug test less than four weeks before their May 21 bout.

Arreola, incidentally, had a 12-round decision over Travis Kauffman in his last outing in December voided when his post-fight urine sample tested positive for marijuana.

He was 27-0 with 24 KOs heading into the initial championship try against Klitschko - a 10th-round TKO loss in September 2009 - and is 9-3-1 since, including the two losses to Stiverne and a majority 12-round scorecard loss to Tomasz Adamek in 2010.

But while the odds seem generous given Arreola's one official win since 2013, the twice-disappointed title hopeful remains just as competitively defiant, if not nearly as conversationally irascible.

He squashed Eric Molina - Wilder's first title challenger - in less than a round, while Wilder was pushed into the ninth in a competitive scrap. And more than a few writers at a big fight weekend in New York last month chatted up the notion he'll give Wilder a rugged ride for as long as he remains vertical.

"I have to stay in his left pocket. I have to stay in his chest. I have to be the aggressive fighter," Arreola said. "Either I'm all the way out or I'm the way in, plain and simple.

"I'm Deontay's opponent. I'm here for him to showcase himself. Or at least that's how I'm picked. But I'm here to throw a wrench in his plans. I'm here to gain everything and to lose nothing."