(Photo credit: Stephanie Trapp/SHOWTIME®) By Scott Gilfoid: WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman believes that heart rather than size will play a big factor in the clash this Saturday night between WBC heavyweight champion Deontay “Bronze Bomber” Wilder (35-0, 34 KOs) and Artur Szpilka (20-1, 15 KOs) at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
The 6’7” Wilder will have a four-inch height advantage and a six-inch reach advantage over the 6’3” Szpilka when the two of them start trading blows in front of the fans. The weight of the fighters will be pretty much even with both guys coming in around 230lbs; although Szpilka will be a heck of a lot stockier than the trim Deontay.
“Size is irrelevant. Mike Tyson was very short, Rocky Marciano was very short,” Sulaiman said to garneksports about the Wilder-Szpilka fight. “If you know how to use this to your advantages, the circumstances could be your advantage, not disadvantage. It will be all about the heart in the ring,” Sulaiman said.
I don’t know if I buy the whole bit about the shorter fighter potentially being better than a much taller fighter stuff that Sulaiman is spouting. I know that a good tall fighter beats a good short fighter almost every time. It definitely helps to be tall in boxing. Yeah, a little short guy can win from time to time against a good taller fighter, but I’d say for the most part, it’s the taller guy that wins.
Sulaiman brings up Rocky Marciano and Mike Tyson as examples of shorter fighters that proved that they could beat the taller fighters during their careers. However, Mike Tyson didn’t really beat any quality tall guys from what I can see on his resume. Tyson lost to Lennox Lewis and Frank Bruno, and that was pretty much the only quality tall guys Tyson ever fought.
These are the tall guys Mike Tyson beat during his career: Andrew Golota, Lou Savarese, and Carl Williams. Rocky Marciano never fought any good tall fighters. He was fighting guys in the 6’1” to 6’3” range. We never saw Marciano fight a 6’5” or bigger quality guy during his career.
My guess is if Marciano fought today in the heavyweight division, he would be in a world of hurt. As such, I think Sulaiman is kidding himself if he thinks that a short guy like Szpilka will be able to make up for his lack of size by having a huge heart and attacking Wilder in an aggressive manner. If Szpilka fights really aggressively on Saturday night, he’s going to run into soething big and wind up getting knocked out quickly; much quicker than some of Wilder’s recent opponents Eric Molina and Johann Duhaupas.
.@szpilka_artur the last thing you're gonna hear before you leave the ring on Saturday is #ANDSTILL…. #BombZquad pic.twitter.com/sNb91VPutA
— Deontay Wilder (@BronzeBomber) January 13, 2016
I don’t think there’s a place for fighters less than 6’4″ in the heavyweight division right now. The bigger heavyweights are too good at the present time, and the shorter guys like David Haye, Szpilka, Vyacheslav Glazkov, Bermane Stiverne and Ruslan Chagaev, don’t really fit in. I know Chagaev is currently the WBA “regular” heavyweight belt holder, and Glazkov is about to fight for the vacant IBF title, but I don’t see Chagaev as a real champion, and I see Glazkov as someone that won’t be able to hold down a title unless he’s carefully matched. As soon as Glazkov fights a quality big guy, I see him losing. I don’t rate Charles Martin as being a quality heavyweight, but he might even beat Glazkov just on size alone without having a lot of talent.
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