by David P. Greisman

If Artur Szpilka is going to go anywhere in the heavyweight division, then he’s going to need to beat Amir Mansour when they fight on Dec. 12 in San Antonio.

And Szpilka’s trainer, Ronnie Shields, knows that isn’t necessarily an easy proposition.

“He’s the kind of guy he’s going to keep trying until something happens,” Shields said. “We know he’s a tough fight.”

Mansour, 43, is 22-1-1 with 16 KOs. The lone loss was in a battle with Steve Cunningham in April 2014. Since then he’s stopped Fred Kassi, outpointed Joey Dawejko, and was held to a draw against Gerald Washington on Oct. 13 in a fight that Mansour believed he deserved to win.

He’s a risky opponent, someone who will press the action, but Shields said there’s a reward that comes with overcoming that risk.

“Somebody asked me, ‘Why take that fight?’ Why not take that fight? If you call yourself a contender, then you have to beat other contenders in order to get to the champion,” Shields said. “You’re not going to get to the champion by fighting stiffs that you can knock out in one or two rounds. You got to fight somebody in the upper echelon. You go through them, then people call your name and say you should be fighting for a world title. Mansour only has one loss and everybody thought he won his last fight. He’s coming in with a lot of momentum, and that’s the kind of guy we want to fight.”

Szpilka, 26, is 20-1 with 15 KOs and has won four straight since losing a 10th-round technical knockout to Bryant Jennings back in January 2014. Since then, Szpilka outpointed Tomasz Adamek and then scored a technical knockout over Ty Cobb and stopped Manuel Quezada and Yasmany Consuegra.

Shields said Szpilka will need to be smart to beat Mansour, and that he’ll need to incorporate what the trainer has been teaching them since they began working together earlier in the year. The Cobb, Quezada and Consuegra fights came after the switch to Shields.

“Everything is a learning experience now, trying to get him out of habits that he had when he was in Poland, trying to make him understand that sometimes you have to make the fight with the guy, you can’t let the guy make the fight to you all the time,” Shields said. “It’s getting out of habits that he has and adding new stuff to him. I’m starting to see that he understands now the things I want to do, and he’s doing it in the gym.

“The most important thing,” Shields said, “is to do it in the fight.”

Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide. Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com