By Scott Gilfoid: WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder (35-0, 34 KOs) says he’s ready right now to take on challenger Artur Szpilka (20-1, 15 Kos) for their fight this month on 1/16. Wilder says he didn’t need this last week of training, because he’s already prepared for their fight at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
The last week of sparring, Wilder felt was unnecessary because he’s totally primed and ready to go against the 26-year-old Szpilka. Wilder is one of those fighters who train year round.
Wilder, 6’7”, is on another level than Szpilka in terms of talent, so he would probably be ready for a fighter like this even if he trained only one week. That is not a knock on Szpilka. It is just the reality about this fight. Szpilka does not have the same kind of talent that Wilder has going for him, and that is one of the reasons why this is such a potential mismatch.
Wilder is above pretty much most of the heavyweights in the division right now, and I can’t think of any of them that match up with him right now. Wladimir Klitschko would have been a good match if he had faced Wilder years ago, but he’s gotten old recently and is no longer the fighter he was before.
“I’m ready to fight. I didn’t need that last week of training, I didn’t need that last week of strength training,” Wilder said via Fightnews.com. “These guys could have went home. If I wasn’t paying my sparring partners, I would have sent them home. But I don’t believe in giving out free money so they had to stay and they had to spar. Not to the point that they didn’t give me no work because they gave me great work. I am SUPER ready!”
Well, it’s good that Wilder didn’t suffer an injury during the last two weeks of training because it would have been bad if he had come up with some kind of physical problem that made it necessary to postpone the fight.
It would be interesting to know who Wilder was sparring with to get ready for this fight. Wilder usually spars with quality fighters. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of his sparring partners are better than Szpilka.
“I’m ready to step into the ring and I also like to fight taller fighters…for now whatever Deontay is saying makes no sense,” Szpilka said to via fightnews.com. “I don’t believe in his words and I’ll be able to prove it in the ring on the 16th. For now it’s just talk.”
Szpilka hasn’t fought anyone as tall as Wilder, so I have no idea who he’s talking about when he blabs about how he likes fighting tall guys. I mean, he fought the 6’4” Taras Bidenko in 2013, but there is big difference between a fighter 6’4” and a fighter 6’7”. There is a huge difference.
I hope Szpilka can fight better than the guys that Wilder has been fighting lately because he’s making easy work of everybody nowadays. Wilder has been taking on fine opponents, but it’s just the case of him being too talented for them.
Comments are closed.