by David P. Greisman

The announced attendance of 12,668 for Deontay Wilder’s knockout of Artur Szpilka was the second-most for boxing at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, behind only the announced 13,048 who showed up to see Danny Garcia against Zab Judah.

That thrilled promoter Lou DiBella, who was involved with the card in his role helping to put on a number of shows involving fighters signed with boxing adviser Al Haymon.

“Deontay had never fought here before. Charles Martin … virtually no one knew who he was, but it’s the power of the heavyweight division. You had a legitimate 12,600 tickets sold. The walkup today was incredible. You saw a lot of people sitting in the upper deck. We set the arena up for 9,700 people and we sold out our original configuration and opened up the upstairs.”

And a big part of that was the Polish contingent who came in support of Szpilka, as well as Adam Kownacki, who won a decision on the preliminary undercard against Danny Kelly.

“You saw tonight the power of the Polish boxing fan in the Tristate area,” DiBella said. “You saw it when [Kryzysztof] Glowacki fought at the Prudential Center [in Newark, New Jersey, against Marco Huck last year]. You saw how many people were here for Artur Szpilka and Adam Kownacki. The Polish fan base in the New York area is amazing.”

The numbers, he said, were all the more impressive given that the fight was officially announced only a handful of weeks before it took place.

“We literally didn’t know what we were promoting. We basically announced this fight a month ago. We had a very short period of time,” DiBella said. “Honestly I really wanted Szpilka to be the opponent, and I’m happy he got the opportunity. I knew he would make for a good fight because the guy has balls of steel. He wanted to bring the title to Poland. He was willing to lay it all on the line, which he did. All props to that guy because he fought his heart out. I knew he also was going to bring in that great Polish boxing audience, and he did.”

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