By Jason Kim: Arthur Abraham (33-3, 26 KO’s) got his career back in order on Saturday night, taking out a made order Pablo Farias (19-2, 11 KO’s) by a 5th round TKO in a night of mismatches at the Baden-Arena, Offenburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

Abraham, 31, turned what was a close fight going into the 5th round into a quick route, as he knocked the shorter Farias down three times in the 5th before the fight was halted after the 3rd knockdown when Farias could no longer get back up to continue fighting.

Abraham looked powerful in the fight and had to chase Farias around the ring through most of it. Abraham showed an excellent jab in the fight and seemed to be throwing more punches than he usually does. However, he had someone that wasn’t coming after him the way that Andre Dirrell, Andre Ward and Carl Froch were in the Super Six tourney. Abraham lost to all three of those fighters. He did look a little better against Farias with the way he was throwing more punches and not just covering up with his clamshell defense.

Despite his bad luck in the Super Six tourney, it appears that Abraham is going to stick it out at super middleweight rather than move back down to middleweight where he previously held the IBF title before moving up in weight in 2009. Abraham looked like he was weighing over 180lbs of all muscle last night and it could be that he can no longer get down to 160 even if he wants to without draining himself completely.

We could see Abraham targeting the WBO belt at some point in the near future after the smoke clears from the fight between Mikkel Kessler and WBO super middleweight champion Robert Stieglitz on April 14th. Abraham wants to fight Stieglitz and Stieglitz also wants to fight him. Kessler’s handlers would also likely be interested in that fight.

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In what turned out to be a really one-sided fight that was frankly painful to watch due to how one-sided it was, WBO super middleweight champion Robert Stieglitz (41-2, 23 KO’s) did a really great job in beating #14 WBO ranked challenger Henry Weber (15-1-1, 3 KO’s) of Germany by a 12 round unanmous decision. The scores were 119-108, 118-110 and 116-112.

Stieglitz used a high punch output attack to really work over Weber and easily control the fight from start to finish. Weber showed a lot of courage by never taking a backwards step despite all the punches he was getting hit with. If he had some power, the fight would have been much different than it was but he was shooting with blanks and couldn’t do anything.

The fight was really one-sided in the 2nd half of the fight, but Weber kept trying until the very end to his credit.

What I liked about Stieglitz’s performance was his combination punching, his hand speed and his stamina. He fought hard for 12 rounds and never seemed to stop throwing punches.

Next up for Stiegitz is a good payday title defense against Mikkel Kessler on April 14th in Denmark. That’s going to be a really tough fight for Stieglitz because Kessler can box and punch.

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Big heavyweight fringe contender Kubrat Pulev (15-0, 7 KO’s) had a fairly easy time beating Britain’s Michael Sprott (36-18, 17 KO’s) by a 10th round stoppage. Sprott had enough of the one-sided beating after the 9th round, so the fight was halted before the start of the 10th.

Other than a good first round where he cut Pulev over the left eye, it was all downhill for the 36-year-old Sprott from then on. Pulev used his jab, right hand and his pressure to keep Sprott backing up and afraid to open up with his shots. Sprott was able to pick off a lot of Pulev’s slow looping punches but he wasn’t able to get his own offense untracked to make the fight competitive. Pulev didn’t have the power to stop Sprott in the traditional sense but was able to bludgeon him into submission and get a stoppage all the same.

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In other action on the card:

Ramona Kuehne TKO 8 Renata Domsodi
Dustin Dirks TKO 4 Sam Couzens