Szpilka willing to take risks against Deontay Wilder

By Boxing News - 12/11/2015 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: #8 WBC Artur Szpilka (20-1, 15 KOs) says he’s going to take the fight to the tall 6’7” WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder (35-0, 34 KOs) and look to get close enough to land his big power shots on the American slugger in their fight on January 16th.

Szpilka, 26, realizes he’s got an uphill climb in this fight due to Wilder’s incredible right hand punching power, but he doesn’t care because he’s willing to risk being knocked out in order to land his own payload of power shots in this very interesting match-up at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. The fight will be televised on Showtime Championship Boxing.

Szpilka thinks that Wilder is easy to hit, and he wants to take advantage of that as quick as he can, because he doesn’t think he’ll be able to stick around for long if he doesn’t. But it might be in Szpilka’s best interest to sit down and watch Wilder’s fight against Bermane Stiverne from last January, because he’ll find out that Wilder really isn’t that easy to hit cleanly over and over again.

You can hit Deontay with a good shot occasionally, but he’s difficult to hit on a frequent basis due to his height, reach, and mobility. Szpilka shouldn’t get Wilder confused with some of the limited heavyweights that he’s fought in the past like Tomasz Adamek. Believe me, there’s a worlds of difference between the smallish Adamek and the 6’7” Wilder.

“It will be a great fight for the fans. Wilder has a very open style, I will try to shorten the distance, get close, hit him with combinations, we will see what happens. I will be there to beat him, take risks,” Szpilka said to Fightnews.com.

Szpilka is a medium sized heavyweight like Adamek and Alexander Povetkin. There really should be two different heavyweight divisions for the regular sized heavyweights like Szpilka, and the super heavyweights like Deontay. When you take a regular sized heavyweight and put them in with the super heavyweights, they seem to lose most of the time.

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It’s rare nowadays that you get a small to medium sized heavyweight beating a good super heavyweight. Yeah, I know Mike Tyson was a medium sized heavyweight in the past and he was able to beat some of the super heavyweights, but he was still a world champion during a weak era of heavyweights. Tyson failed eventually when he did fight a super heavyweight in Lennox Lewis. I think the same thing would have happened to Tyson if he fought Riddick Bowe and the Klitschkos.

“I will not be afraid of Wilder. I will be close enough to hit him,” Szpilka said. “I will not wait, because he can hit really hard with his right hand. Even if I lose by KO, I will fight until the end. I will not go in the ring against Wilder just to survive – I will be there to beat him.”

Szpilka is a fine little fighter, but he’s too short, too slow and too limited to beat Wilder in my view. Wilder is going to be able to tee off on Szpilka a lot more than he did in his last fight against the 6’5″ Johann Duhaupas in their fight last September. In fact, I rate Duhaupas as a better fighter than Szpilka and I think he would easily beat him.



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