By Johnny Walker
Charismatic Polish heavyweight Artur Szpilka continued his winning ways by stopping American-based veteran Owen “What The Heck” Beck today, as Beck failed to come out for the fourth round of a scheduled six-round affair in Katowice, Poland.
The 22-year-old Szpilka (8-0-0, 6 KOs) just had way too much of everything for Beck: too much speed, too much power, too much energy. After entering the ring in what has become his trademark orange prison jumpsuit, accompanied by two sexy strippers and a Polish rap act, the shaven-headed southpaw strafed the hapless Beck with hard straight lefts from the opening bell onward, seemingly hurting his journeyman foe every time he connected. Szpilka grew confident quickly, and had already lowered his hands by round two, when Beck snuck in a hard right hand to Szpilka’s chin.
Such moments of joy for Beck (29-9-0, 20 KOs) were few and far between, however. By round three, Szpilka decided it was time to close the show, and trapped his foe against the ropes, blitzing Beck with power punches that left the journeyman wobbly. Beck’s right eye was bleeding profusely at the end of the round, and as he returned to his stool, the fighter summoned referee Leszek Jankowiak and might have said, “what the heck, let’s forget about this fight.” And so the contest ended.
Once again, Artur Szpilka showed in this outing that he possesses star power. Not only does Szpilka have speed, power and aggression: he also has the kind of “bad boy with a smile” persona that Americans claim they like to see in their heavyweight champions (hopefully, then, Szpilka’s people are going to buy him some good English lessons).
And Americans will get their next chance to see Artur Szpilka in action soon, as he returns to the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Connecticut, on November 5, to face Joshua Harris (8-5-1, 6 KOs).
