By Dan Ambrose: Following in the footsteps of fellow Australians Danny Green and Anthony Mundine in taking soft title defenses, International Boxing Federation (IBF) middleweight champion Daniel Geale (26-1, 15 KO’s) easily defeated 37-year-old fringe contender Eromosele Albert (24-5, 12 KO’s) by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision on Wednesday night at the Derwent Entertainment Centre in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.

The final judges’ scores were 117-111, 119-109 and 116-112. I saw Geale, 30, winning every round of the fight. However, he looked very weak with his punches and reminded me a lot of a middleweight version of former WBA super middleweight champion Yuri Foreman. Like Foreman, Geale has no punching power and moves constantly, changing directions and landing weak shots from time to time, ending often with a clinch.

Very ugly to watch, especially last night’s fight against an old fringe contender like Albert. How or why Albert was selected out of all the other potential contenders in the real question. It was a very poor pick, but not surprising because a lot of champions milk their titles.

Geale seemed to read the minds of many boxing fans afterwards, feeling need to defend his choice of Albert over a more suitable contender. Geale said “We’re not out to there to take easy fights. This was tough guy.” Albert had lost three out of his last seven fights going into tonight’s fight with Geale. Tough? I don’t think so. It looked to me like a very safe choice because Geale could have picked better.

As for the fight, every round was exactly the same with Geale running constantly, stopping, throwing weak shots and then grabbing Albert in a clinch. Geale used a lot of changes of direction and sometimes switched to southpaw to try and confuse Albert. It was a huge waste of energy because Albert was so incredibly slow of hand and foot that Geale basically could have moved in slow circles and won the fight instead of bouncing and running around the ring all night.

In the later rounds, Geale’s wasted movement led to him tiring out and taking more heavy shots. Again, it was stupid of Geale to move so much against a limited fighter like Albert, but that seems to be Geale’s style.

All in all, very unimpressive performance by Geale. I see him as a paper champion and by far the weakest of the four middleweight belt holders. He moves too much, doesn’t have power, dives for constant clinches, and wastes energy with the movement and other needless gimmicks he uses. I see him getting beaten by contenders like Marco Antonio Rubio, Darren Barker, Matthew Macklin, Hassan N’Dam N’Jikam, Sebastian Zbik Brian Vera, and Daniel Jacobs.