By Scott Gilfoid: The hard hitting Nicolai Firtha (21-10-1, 8 KO’s) is the next opponent for American heavyweight KO artist Deontay Wilder (29-0, 29 KO’s), but he sounds more like a fan to me than knockout #30 for the 6’7″ Deontay.
Firtha got to see Deontay’s power up close when the two worked as sparring partners for IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko for his recent bout against the 6’8″ Mariusz Wach, and Firtha was in awe of Deontay’s talent and power in watching him spar round after round with the 6’6″ Wladimir.
Deontay ended up being Wladimir’s #1 sparring partner in helping him get ready for the fight, and Firtha got to see a lot of Deontay in watching his sparring sessions with the big Ukrainian.
Firtha told Boxing News “The scary thing for me, and I’ll be honest, he [Wilder] gave Wladimir, the champ, the most rounds of sparring of any of his sparring partners in that camp…He’s [Deontay] the Lebron James of boxing.”
Deontay and Firtha will be facing each other this month on October 26th at the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. This going to be an excellent fight because Firtha has a good chin, excellent power and decent size. He should be able to give Deontay some rounds because Firtha has only been stopped early once in his career in getting blown out in the 2nd round by a heavyweight named James Northey back in 2006.
Firtha has improved a lot since then, and he’s a lot tougher to stop now. If Deontay get him out of there in 2 rounds or less, it’ll say a lot about how devastating of a puncher he is.
Golden Boy Promotions, the promoters for Deontay, wanted to get a much better opponent for him than Firtha, but with Deontay being told that he would be fighting on the card less than a month ago, it was impossible to find a good heavyweight that would agree to fight Deontay on such short notice. No one wants to get into the ring and have to take his big right hands without a ton of preparation, and, yeah, a lot of money. That was the other problem. The Deontay-Firtha fight is buried on the card Bernard Hopkins vs. Karo Murat card. It’s not the main event or the co-feature bout; so the money wasn’t good enough to lure one of the top names to face Wilder.
It doesn’t matter that Deontay didn’t get a big name for this fight. His focus is to keep winning and an improving with each fight. He’ll keep getting pushed up the rankings each time he obliterates an opponent, and by next year you can expect to see the big giants – Deontay and Wladimir – in the ring facing each other in a fight that will likely take place in Germany. That’ll be exciting to see because Deontay will be one year older, and an even better than he is now. It’ll be a big fight over there, and Showtime now doubt will be televising the affair to the fans in the U.S.
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