By Eric Thomas: 31-year-old former IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (32-3, 26 KO’s) squares off against super middleweight contender Pablo Oscar Natalio Farias (19-1, 11 KO’s) in a crucial fight for Abraham on January 14th at the Baden-Arena in Offenburg, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany. Abraham recently signed a three year contract extension with Sauerland promotions and it will take him through his 34th birthday.

Abraham hopes to be still fighting effectively by the time gets to that age. However, 34 is still long ways off and Abraham needs to be more concerned with how he’s fighting now, because he’s not looked good since leaving the middleweight division in 2009. Even before he left the middleweight division, Abraham was no longer dominating in the same fashion he had been from 2005 to 2008.

What you could see was a huge drop off in his work rate, as Abraham seemed unable to fight hard for more than a minute of each round without tiring out and needing long rest breaks. He moved up in weight but that didn’t fix the problem and after beating Jermain Taylor by a 12th round knockout in his first fight in the Super Six tournament, Abraham in all three of his last bouts in the tournament and looked steadily worse with each fight.

Abraham will be moving back down in weight to the middleweight division in 2012 and he hopes to challenge for a title against one of the champions. That’s kind of a tall order because he’s currently not ranked in the middleweight division. He’d have to get help from one of the champions like Felix Sturm to get a title shot handed to him.

Abraham lost his last fight to WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward. There’s no shame obviously in losing to Ward, as he’s clearly one of the best fighters in the division right now. But Abraham’s work rate was poor in the fight and he looked and fought badly.

If Abraham goes after Farias hard on January 14th he should get a knockout but he’s going to have to really let his hands go. If he lets this guy survive for long he could end up out-boxing Abraham and punishing him.