By Scott Gilfoid: WBC heavyweight champion Deontay “Bronze Bomber” Wilder (35-0, 34 KOs) plans on scoring a knockout over challenger Artur Szpilka (20-1, 15 KOs) next month and sending a message to the heavyweight division in the process when he faces Szpilka on January 16th on Showtime from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
The talented Deontay feels he’s the best heavyweight in the division right now bar none, and his predicted knockout victory over the 26-year-old Szpilka will put the world on notice that he’s not to be messed with.
Szpilka is just one of many young lions that are vying for Wilder’s throne. You also have heavyweights like Anthony Joshua, who is being carefully guided with motherly care by his promoter Eddie Hearn to get his eventual shot at Deontay at some point.
Wilder sayings bring them on, because he’s not shying away from any of the top challengers in the division. He intends on beating all the top contenders and holding onto his WBC title for a long, long time.
I’m knocking Szpilka out and I’m sending a message to everyone who stands in my way,” Wilder said today during his conference call with Szpilka. “Once I knock Szpilka out, I want all the Polish fans to come on the “Bronze Bomber” train as I bring the heavyweight division back to the top.”
Szpilka is expected to have a lot of his Polish fans that will be coming out from the New York area to see him fight Wilder on 1/16 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. That would be a huge feather in Szpilka’s cap if he were able to take Wilder’s scalp in this fight. All of Szpilka’s supporters will be there to see him fight, and it would be a big deal for him.
It would be Szpilka’s 15 minutes of fame, because I couldn’t see Szpilka holding onto the WBC title for any length of time other the time that the World Boxing Council gave him to take voluntary defenses. Szpilka doesn’t have the kind of talent in my view for him to hold down a world title for more than one or two careful defenses. We are talking about a fighter that was almost beaten by Mike Mollla no too long ago.
“I can win this fight. You’re done January 16,” Szpilka said to Wilder. “He’s never fought somebody like me. Everybody he fought but Bermane Stiverne was a bum,” Szpilka said.
I hate to say it but Wilder has already beaten a handful of fighters that were better than Szpilka during his career. Wilder has wins over Stiverne, Eric Molina and Johann Duhaupas, and I see all three of those fighters as being better than Szpilka. Wilder also has wins over Malik Scott and Sergey Liakhovich, and I see those guys as better than Szpilka too.
Hopefully, Szpilka don’t be one of those heavyweights that claim that he should have won the fight if the fight goes to the cards. It has become so dull to see fighters failing to come to terms with their losses.
“Only three people have actually tried to fight him. Everybody else had already lost before they got into the ring,” Szpilka said. “I wanted this fight. This is my time. The heavyweight titles are wide open. There’s new blood for boxing.”
With the way that Szpilka performed in his 10th round knockout loss to Bryant Jennings last year in January 2014, he’s going to need to bring his game up several levels for him not to wind up as an easy knockout victim by Wilder. Szpilka looked something awful in that fight, and was just so slow and hittable that it wasn’t even funny.
Yeah, Szpilka has won his last four fights since then, but he’s done it against smaller heavyweights in the 6’1″ range and not the giant 6’5″ to 6’7″ range that he would need to face in order to get prepared for a talent like the 6’7″ Wilder. Szpilka beat the 6’2″ Tomasz Adamek last year in an upset 10 round decision win in November 2014, but Adamek is little more than a blown up light heavyweight, who clearly doesn’t belong in the upper tier of the heavyweight division. Beating him proved nothing other than the fact that Adamek is a tiny heavyweight who doesn’t belong with the big boys.
Comments are closed.