A former Deontay Wilder victim dropped a mass of weight only to lose via first-round knockout on his debut in the division.
Artur Szpilka, who the heavyweight puncher admitted he thought he’d killed when he sparked him out in 2016, looked shredded for his cruiserweight debut.
The Pole shed a ton of weight for his move down, over forty pounds after his loss to Derek Chisora.
Never out of shape as a heavyweight anyway, Szpilka lost 42 pounds just twenty months later. He was successful when beating Serhiy Radchenko on his debut at 200 pounds.
The victory came after Szpilka got blasted out in two rounds by Chisora before making a heavyweight comeback with a first-round knockout.
Artur Szpilka weight loss
Just three months later, Szpilka scaled 226 pounds, taking just 87 seconds to dispatch Fabio Tuiach in his home nation.
So why the 33-year-old decided to go even further down another 25 pounds to weigh just 201 pounds is anyone’s guess.
He was showing off his incredible physique on social media. Szpilka also revealed how many inches he burned from his waist when displaying a video clip of his trousers.
The Radchenko fight saw Szplika get away with the dramatic weight drop. However, even putting pounds back on couldn’t save Szpilka from Lukasz Rozanski.
Out of the ring for another fourteen months, Szpika didn’t build on his promise to fight at cruiserweight. Instead, he accepted an offer at the new bridgerweight of 224 pounds.
Szpilka’s dream of earning the first shot at the newly-formed green and gold belt ended badly. Rozanski, 13-0 at the time, blasted Szplika out in 145 seconds at the
Hala na Podpromiu in Rzeszow.
He is yet to fight again in boxing.
Deontay Wilder
It’s a far cry from Szpilka’s claim to fame as a world title challenger in the top division. Szpilka can rightly state he was famously ahead on the scorecards against Deontay Wilder in their January 2016 bout.
Szpilka was just three rounds, nine minutes and six seconds to be exact, from becoming the WBC heavyweight champion of the world.
It all ended in the final minute of the ninth as Szpilka took an almighty shot. Unfortunately for him and many others against “The Bronze Bomber,” that was all she wrote.
In the aftermath, Wilder infamously claimed he thought he’d killed Szpilka in what have now become resonating words.
“When I knocked out Artur Szpilka, I thought he was dead for a few seconds. That’s just from natural, Alabama country power,” said Wilder in the run-up to his follow-up clash with Gerald Washington.
World title loss
When discussing what might have been, Szpilka was philosophical about the ending.
“Despite the eventual KO, I think it was quite a good fight with Wilder,” he pointed out. “I had to fight with a broken hand from the fourth round onwards.
“Deontay finally got me in the ninth round. But this is boxing. Up until that point, I was very much in the fight.
“I proved I can mix it at that level. I hope the best is still to come.”
That best has to happen in a comeback, as Szpilka needs to be active if he wants to make any dent in any division.
At the moment, he’s fixated on MMA. That may be the case for the foreseeable future.
