By Matt Stein: Making his first title defense in 14 months, WBA middleweight champion Felix Sturm (34-2-1, 14 KO’s) won a lopsided and dull 12 round unanimous decision over the badly over-matched number #7 ranked World Boxing Association middleweight challenger Giovanni Lorenzo (29-3, 21 KO’s) on Saturday night at the Lanxess-Arena, Cologne, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. The final judges’ scores were 117-111, 117-111 and 118-111.

Sturm needed little more than his jab to beat the limited Lorenzo, who like in his previous losses to Sebastian Sylvester and Raul Marquez, simply didn’t let his hands go enough to get the win. Lorenzo did come on late in the fight to control the action in rounds ten through twelve when Sturm tired. However, by then Lorenzo was hopelessly behind in the fight and needed a knockout if he was to win. Lorenzo’s power wasn’t there by that point in the fight, and such he had to be satisfied with finishing strong but still losing the fight by decision.

Lorenzo looked good in the opening round, putting pressure on Sturm and landing the bigger shots. Sturm mostly thew jabs in this round. In the 2nd round, Lorenzo came out firing left hooks to the body. However, Sturm began to tag Lorenzo with nice right hands to the head and hard jabs that were snapping Lorenzo’s head back. Lorenzo was strong in this round and fighting hard. The problem was he was so sloppy, clumsy and slow of hand. If he had more hand speed and was a little bit more athletic he would have given Sturm problems in this round.

In rounds three and four, Stum started to take control of the fight using his jabs. Lorenzo was still throwing left hooks to the body, but was getting hit with straight right hands when he would leave himself open. Sturm spent a lot of the time slowly walking Lorenzo down. Sturm didn’t have to move his feet much because Lorenzo was there right in front of him making it easy for Sturm to land his jabs. In the 5th round, Lorenzo landed a nice hard body shot with a big left. Sturm continued to jab him again and again in the head, looking very repetitive.

There was no mystery about what Sturm was doing in there, but Lorenzo was just too limited and basic to figure out a strategy to beat Sturm. Every once in awhile Sturm would land a cracking right hand that would get the German crowd into the fight. There really wasn’t much to cheer about because Sturm’s jabs made the fight dull to watch and Lorenzo just didn’t have any idea what do in the ring. In the 6th and 7th rounds, Sturm began to bully Lorenzo, tagging with hard hooks to the body, right hands to the head and pressuring him to the ropes where Sturm was working Lorenzo over. When Lorenzo would come forward, he’d walk straight into Sturm’s jabs more often than not. In the 8th round, Sturm was slicing Lorenzo up with powerful jabs and not getting much in return. Lorenzo already looked beaten by this point in the fight.

In rounds nine through twelve, Sturm visibly slowed down and threw far fewer punches. Lorenzo began to take advantage of it by appearing to win the rounds with his slightly better work rate. Both fighters looked sloppy and tired and Sturm was looking old all of a sudden. However, Lorenzo just didn’t have the firepower or the juice to put Sturm in any kind of trouble in the remaining rounds.

In the end, it was great match-making by Sturm to select Lorenzo as his opponent. He had no chance going into the fight and the outcome proved this out. Hopefully, Sturm will start fighting quality fighters and not just pick off the weakest fighters that he can find when facing his non-mandatory title defenses.

In other action on the card, middleweight Benjamin Simon (18-1, 17 KO’s) stopped Magomed Abdurakhmanov (15-4, 8 KO’s) in the 5th round.