By Chris Williams: Making his first defense of his WBA cruiserweight title, Firat Arslan (29-3-1, 18 KOs) won a one-sided 12-round unanimous decision over American Darnell Wilson (23-7-3, 20 KOs) on Saturday night at the Hanns-Martin-Schleyer-Halle, in Stuttgart, Baden-Wuttemberg, Germany. It was thought that Wilson, 33, might have a good chance at beating the talented, but limited Arslan. However, Wilson seemed hampered by the over-sized gloves that he was wearing, which were huge looking, obviously meant more for defense than for offense.
It was immediately clear that Wilson was going to have problems landing his shots, one because of the high guard that Arslan was holding in front of his face, protecting himself from the heavy shots of Wilson, and two because Wilson’s hand speed was very poor. That’s not to say that Arslan’s was much better, because he too has dismal handspeed. However, in Arslan’s case, he’s mostly an arm puncher, almost unable to put his body behind his shots for some reason. Not sure why, because he looks as if he could punch a hole through a wall with all his muscles, but in this case, his muscles seem to prevent him from throwing hard shots instead of working in his favor. Indeed, Arslan didn’t even try to punch hard, mostly throwing jabs for the entire fight.
His left and right hand shots, for their part, were like a jab because of his inability to put his body behind his shots. It didn’t matter, though, because Wilson was incapable of starting his own offense for the entire fight. Oh, he tried but Arlan, 37, would easily pick off his slow shots every time he’d attempt to land anything. Arslan was helped immensely by the slowness of Wilson’s shots, which seemed as if he were throwing everything in slow motion.
I’d seen him fight a couple of times before but I don’t recall him being this slow. He fought as if he had a ton of dead fast twitch nerve cells in his body, which kept him from throwing anything that Arslan couldn’t see coming a mile away. For the most part, all Arslan had to do was throw a steady jab, something he does all the time, and for all practical purposes the fight was his.
Wilson looked overmatched early in the first round, as he ate a high number of jabs in the round, while having virtually all of his slow punches blocked by Arslan. The German crowd, disparate for anything to cheer for, screamed like mad every time that Arslan would throw a jab. They spent much of the round shouting approval because Arslan never let up with his jab for a moment as he repeatedly nailed Wilson in the grill with it. Wilson looked almost embarrassed, as if he knew he was doing poorly against Arslan and felt bad about himself. He didn’t really have a lot of options in which to use to try and adjust to Arslan’s constant jabs. Wilson, not much on jabbing himself, couldn’t match him in this department even if he wanted to.
At the same time, the huge gloves that he had on almost guaranteed that he wouldn’t be able to stop Arslan with a single shot, which is what he normally does when knocking out his opponents. This meant that Wilson would have to try and outwork Arslan, and that’s something that he could never hope to do because Arslan never stops punching for more than a few seconds. What Wilson needed most of all was movement, but with his lumbering physique, he could never get his huge body around much without tiring out. That’s too bad, because Arslan is a sitting duck for a cruiserweight with movement and a long jab. With a long torso and little short pipe stem legs, Arslan is very top heavy and built more like a wrestler than a boxer. He’s good when a fighter stands directly in front of him, like Wilson conveniently did for him on Saturday night. However, if you make Arslan move his little stubby legs much, he’s out of his element. A mover like BJ Flores would have a field day against Arslan. Wilson, however, didn’t have a chance with his limited movement.
Virtually all of Wilson’s punches were blocked in the rounds two through six. Only in the seventh did he get a few through the guard of Arslan, but by then Arslan was well ahead of the fight, winning every round and looking very confident. Wilson had lost much of his power by this time in the fight, so it didn’t matter that he was able to score three to four punches per round. Arslan, however, continued to outland Wilson by a wide margin, almost embarrassing in the lopsided margin of punches landed. Like I said earlier, most of them were jabs but they were doing damage, swelling up Wilson’s face.
As the rounds progressed, Wilson took a ferocious amount of punishment from Arslan. By the 10th round, Wilson looked punch drunk from all the jabs and straight left hands he was forced to eat. Though they weren’t hard shots, the sheer number of them had Wilson looking like a person who had drank a six pack of beer as he wobbled around the ring at times. It wasn’t a pretty sight, because I had hopes that Wilson would be able to take Arslan out with something big. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the tools to get the job done.
The final judges’ scores were 117-111, 117-111 and 117-111, all for Arslan.