By Jim Dower: Making his first appearance since losing a one-sided decision to Andre Ward last year in the Super Six tournament, former IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (33-3, 26 KO’s) got back to the winning ways on Saturday night, stopping the welterweight-sized Argentinian Pablo Farias (19-2, 11 KO’s) in the 5th round of an ugly to watch fight at the Baden Arena in Offenberg, Germany. The fight appeared even going into the 5th round.

Abraham hurt the short 5’8″ super middleweight Farias with a hard right and and left that put him down with a left to the head. After Farias got back to his feet, Abraham nailed with a huge right hand to the head that backed him up and then hit him with another big right to put him down for the second knockdown in the round. When the action resumed, Abraham ran after Farias throwing windmill punches and landed a right hand to the midsection that sent Farias down in agony for the third and final time.

Overall, it wasn’t a good performance from Abraham, who threw the same wide punches as he always does and looked very sloppy. If this is the best that Abraham can do against a pint-sized super middleweight that was dug up for him from the 2nd tier then he needs to retire. He doesn’t look like the same fighter he once was.

Abraham looked really rusty, missing a lot of shots and throwing his customary looping punches. He’s still using his turtle defense and took a lot of shots against a fighter that the top super middleweights would have blown away. Don’t know why Abraham is still fighting at super middleweight. He needs to move down in weight somehow or settle for being a gatekeeper at middleweight. He can’t beat guys like Farias when they’re dug up from the 2nd tier, but Abraham will lose to pretty much all of the top tier fighters at super middleweight.