By Alexey Sukachev
Digibet Pferdesportpark, Berlin, Germany - 40-year old former cruiserweight champion Firat Arslan (30-5-1, 19 KOs) came back to pugilistic practice with a bang, stopping badly overmatched Czech professional loser Michal Bilak (19-16, 10 KOs) at 2:28 of the third round. Arsaln was almost unstoppable with his uppercuts and left hooks to the liver. Bilak bravely fought back but his class wasn't even remotely close to that of Arslan. The Germany-based Turk was last seen in the ring in July 2010 losing to WBA interim champion Steve Herelius in dramatic fashion due to a severe exhaustion.
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Czech Ondrej Pala (29-2, 21 KOs) will enter the WBO heavyweight rankings after his one-sided beatdown of Ukrainian journeyman Alexey Mazikin (16-6-2, 3 KOs) for a vacant WBO Europe belt. Pala, 26, was way faster than plodding and seemingly out-of-shape former Ukrainian Olympian and was easily beating him to the punch all night long. Quick Pala just jumped in, landed some lightning-fast combinations and immediately jumped out. Mazikin, 36, was unable to cut angles effectively and was overmatched in almost every department. The fight was stopped after the conclusion of the seventh round by referee Manfred Kuechler. Pala had a harder win over Mazikin a year and a half ago when he outpointed him over eight rounds.
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Rising Turkish heavyweight Erkan Teper (5-0, 3 KOs), 28, was unable to knock out durable journeyman Robert Hawkins (23-17, 7 KOs) but clearly passed the first worthy test of his young career with a dominating unanimous decision in six rounds. Teper put Hawkins, 41, down twice (in the second and in the fourth rounds) with huge left uppercuts to the jaw but hadn't enough power to finish him off. The veteran fighter lost his seventh consecutive contest.