By Thomas Gerbasi
Talking to a heavyweight title challenger nine days before the biggest fight of his life, you can usually start to notice the nerves creeping in. To put a career’s worth of work into one night can rattle anyone, and as the days tick away to fight night, that pressure can be overwhelming.
Not to Artur Szpilka, who left this interview with the following refrain:
“Only nine days. Only nine days.”
Now it’s one day away, the Wieliczka, Poland native’s challenge of Deontay Wilder for the WBC heavyweight title, and if he’s bothered by the magnitude of the event at Barclays Center on Saturday, he’s not even close to showing it. That comes as no surprise to his coach, Ronnie Shields.
“This kid, he’s one of the happiest kids you’ll ever meet in your life,” Shields said. “He’s a naturally good guy and he’s a big kid. You have to hang around him just to see the stuff that he does. He’s just happy that he’s living life and you’ve never seen a fighter like that before, just a genuinely happy-go-lucky guy. And he fights the same way. He loves boxing, he loves to be in that ring, he loves to be a competitor. It’s just who he is.”
The 26-year-old southpaw has become a media favorite in the lead-up to this weekend’s bout, and that’s no surprise. While English isn’t his native tongue, he expresses himself easily and enthusiastically, and given his evolution from soccer hooligan to possibly the next heavyweight champion of the world, and the first ever for Poland, Szpilka’s story is as compelling as it gets. And he knows it can only get better.
“My life is awesome,” he said. “I work hard, I love boxing, and this is my life. Of course, it (winning the title) will change my life because I will be world champion, but it’s important because I can change my story. This is not only being world champion. When I die, when my kids will have kids, everybody will say the first heavyweight champion of the world from Poland was Artur Szpilka, and this is awesome. America had world heavyweight champions before Wilder, big heavyweight champions like Tyson, Frazier, Foreman, and Muhammad Ali. This is different. Poland never had a heavyweight champion; it was always cruiser and light heavyweight.”
If anyone knows “big” heavyweight champions, it’s Shields, who has manned the corner for Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield, and who believes his charge has the potential to join that duo in the history books, even if the oddsmakers and pundits disagree.
“A reporter told me the other day that the consensus around is that Deontay is gonna just murder Spilka,” Shields said. “And I said, you know what, it’s easy for someone to look and say that because Deontay’s so big. They say it’s impossible for Spilka to hit him because he’s got long arms. You’re talking to guys that have never been in the ring before, so how would they know? If it was that way, it would be impossible for anybody to beat Deontay Wilder, and it’s not impossible to beat him. Nobody’s beaten him yet, but he’s not going to finish his career undefeated, I can guarantee you that much, because on Saturday, he’s going to get that loss.”
Szpilka and Shields have been a winning pair, the fighter winning three straight, all by knockout, since linking up with the respected Texas coach.
“I love him, he is the best person,” Szpilka said of Shields. “Ronnie might not talk something, but I look at his eyes and I know everything. Whether he’s happy or not happy. He is the best coach and I trust him. And I’m happy because now I can only train and on the 16th of January I will be world champion.”
Shields admires his charge’s attitude and heart, and he also believes he has the talent to beat the 35-0 Wilder if he sticks to the game plan, always an iffy proposition with a fighter like “The Pin,” who has no problem getting into a brawl if the mood strikes.
“This is why you train, this is why you put a game plan together, and hopefully your guy will do it and do what he’s been working on for all his life,” Shields said. “Szpilka has a great amateur background and he has 21 professional fights. Deontay doesn’t have an extensive amateur background, but he has 35 professional fights. Szpilka is the smaller guy, but he’s the faster guy, he’s just as strong as Deontay, and when you put the experience together, Szpilka has fought a lot more guys like Deontay than Deontay has fought like Artur Szpilka. So when you put the intangibles together, Szpilka may really be the favorite.
“I see a lot of different things when I’m watching Deontay on tape that we can exploit,” he continues. “And just like anything else, I remember when Holyfield first won the heavyweight championship against Buster Douglas. Everybody said that same thing – ‘he’s gonna kill Holyfield. Holyfield’s got a lot of attributes, but he lacks this, he lacks that.’ And if you go by and listen to what other people say, you’ve lost before you got in there.”
Szpilka doesn’t pay attention to the talk, and he’s done his best to avoid any exchanges with Wilder, even if that hasn’t worked out too well this week, when the two almost came to blows during a photo op in Manhattan. But none of that matters once the bell rings in Brooklyn, and Szpilka can’t wait to hear it.
“I’m confident in this fight,” he said. “I don’t want to talk s**t like Wilder wants to do because I know how it tastes to lose when I fought with (Bryant) Jennings. Wilder doesn’t know anything. He talks s**t, but he will see on January 16 that this is no joke and somebody will kick his ass.”
