By Scott Gilfoid: Former heavyweight title challenger Dominic Breazeale (17-1, 15 KOs) will be fighting Artur Szpilka (20-2, 15 KOs) in a scheduled 10 round fight on the undercard of the heavyweight title clash between WBC champion Deontay “Bronze Bomber” Wilder and Andrzej Wawrzyk on February 25 at the Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama.
#7 WBC Szpilka is coming off of a bad 9th round knockout loss to Wilder from last January at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Szpilka was knocked clean out by a right hand from Wilder in the 9th. It was a devastating knockout loss for the 27-year-old Szpilka.
It’s good that he’s taken this much time off to recover from the TKO loss, because he probably needed the time off to recover. By the time Szpilka fights in February 2017, he’ll have been out of the ring for 13 months. Hopefully for Szpilka’s sake it’s enough time for him to have recovered from his knockout at the hands of Wilder.
Breazeale says he wants to get a title shot against Wilder. Gosh, I don’t see how a fight of that type can happen soon. Wilder is about to fight his 5th voluntary defense of his title. Breazeale is someone that would be a decent stay busy fight for Wilder in 2018, but not in 2017.
The 6’7” former fringe contender Breazeale was stopped in the 7th round by Joshua on June 25 at the O2 Arena in London, England. After talking a big game in the weeks leading up to the fight, Breazeale failed to produce inside the ring on the night against Joshua.
The 31-year-old Breazeale threw very few punches in the fight. It looked as if he was trying to wait Joshua out by letting him unload on him with everything he had in hopes of taking him to the deep waters in the second half of the fight. If that was the strategy that Breazeale was using, it was a bad one. He took too much punishment from Joshua, especially in the 7th round, when he was worked over when trapped against the ropes.
Breazeale hasn’t shown anything in his last three fights against Joshua, Amir Mansour and Fred Kassi. Breazeale looked like he should have lost all three fights. Breazeale was given a controversial 10 round unanimous decision win over Kassi in their fight on September 26, 2015.
The judges scored the fight 98-92, 97-93 and 100-90. However, the boxing fans at ringside loudly booed the decision, as many of them felt that Kassi should have won that fight. In Breazeale’s fight against Mansour, he stopped the 43-year-old in the 5th on an injury stoppage. Mansour suffered a jaw injury in the fight. However, Mansour was getting the better of Breazeale through five rounds. Mansour knocked Breazeale down hard in the 3rd round, and looked to be on his way to a victory until the injury occurred in the 5th. Mansour chose not to come out for the 6th.
Not surprisingly, Breazeale is no longer ranked in the top 15 by any of the sanctioning bodies. He was ranked at No.13 by the International Boxing Federation at the time that he fought Joshua.
Breazeale said this to skysports.com about his fight against Szpilka and how he hopes he can get a title shot against Wilder:
“My first step in getting there is by beating Artur Szpilka impressively,” said Breazeale. “I’m the co main-event on WBC world heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder’s card and I want him to know that I want a crack at that title.”