By Scott Gilfoid: A couple days ago, 26-year-old Polish native Artur Szpilka (20-1, 15 KOs) was involved in an altercation that nearly came to blows with WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder (35-0, 34 KOs) in at the World Trade Center in Manhattan, New York. While boxing fans believe it was a staged altercation between the two fighters, it doesn’t appear anything was faked between the two.
Szpilka came in close to Deontay when he was trash talking him, and then made the mistake of ramming his head against Deontay. This caused Deontay to take a swipe at Szpilka, which thankfully didn’t lead to an injury for either fighter. It did show that you don’t want to mess around with Deontay, because he’s like a caged lion when an opponent acts aggressively towards him both in and out of the ring.
“When somebody talks [expletive] every time and has no respect for you, I can fight every time, but nobody paid me,” Szpilka said. “I’m a professional, after this I think wow, why was it like this? But you know, this is emotion. Sometimes you can only say something and just talk shit, but I can wait. I can wait for the fight.”
Well, if Szpilka wants to be seen as a professional, then he’s going to need to keep his distance from his opponents in the future, because I think it could lead to him having further problems if he tries his head-butting tricks against other fighters. Some guys don’t take too well to having their heads rammed when they’re jawing at their opponents. It’s too risky in the fight game because it could lead to an injury, and that’s the last thing that fighters need is to get rammed by an opponent during a photo op.
Szpilka, 26, made sure that he kept his distance from Deontay during the weigh-in on Friday. Szpilka didn’t need to have another altercation with Deontay this close to the fight. Szpilka will get his chance to throw his shots tonight when he and Deontay meet up at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. I mean, I just hope that the southpaw Szpilka keeps it clean and doesn’t start head-butting, because that would look really bad if he resorts to doing that in the fight.
Deontay isn’t going to give Szpilka a lot of opportunities to get in close, I imagine. The 6’7” Deontay likes to keep his shorter opponents on the outside where he can nail them with powerful jabs, right hands and left hooks.
Szpilka is going to need to find a way to get close enough to land his own power shots, because he’s not someone that is too well versed in fighting on the outside. If you look at all of Szpilka’s fights, he likes to plod forward to medium distance and throw his power shots from there. He doesn’t appear to be able to get good extension on his shots when he’s on the outside. I think it might be a flexibility issue, as well as him not having the longest of arms.
Not long now till I hear those beautiful words…. #AndStill the WBC Heavyweight Champ of the world!! #WilderSzpilka pic.twitter.com/gAYmntA6CH
— Deontay Wilder (@BronzeBomber) January 16, 2016
Comments are closed.