Stieglitz easily beats overmatched fringe contender Weber

By Boxing News - 01/14/2012 - Comments

Image: Stieglitz easily beats overmatched fringe contender WeberBy Jim Dower: In am embarrassingly one-sided fight, WBO super middleweight champion Robert Stieglitz (41-2, 23 KOs) easily defeated #14 World Boxing Organization ranked contender Henry Weber (15-1-1, 3 KOs) by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision on Saturday night at the Baden Arena in Offenberg, Germany. The final judges’ scores were 119-109, 118-110 and 116-112.

Stieglitz appeared to win every round of the fight, and the judge’ scores seemed a little out of touch with what actually happened in the fight. For Stieglitz, it was his fifth title defense of his WBO and his last before he faces former two-time super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler on April 14th in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The 23-year-old Weber could do little in this fight, as not only was he not as fast as the 30-year-old Stieglitz but he also didn’t have the same kind of power as him. In every round, Weber was overwhelmed by Stieglitz’s almost nonstop punches.

Stieglitz looked desperate at times to try and finish Weber off but lacked the power needed to finish the job. The fight was never really competitive at any point, but it got really one-sided in the second half of the fight with Stieglitz landing at will.

Weber lost his mouthpiece repeatedly in the fight, often when he would get hit with big uppercuts. Stieglitz had a bad habit coming inside and shouldering Weber, but it didn’t cost him anything, although referee gave him several warnings in the fight for this practice.

Perhaps Weber’s best round of the fight was the 4th when he landed some uppercuts and short hooks. Stieglitz, however, answered him back each time he threw and with better power. If you were to give Weber any of the rounds in the fight, this would be the one. I don’t think he did enough to win the round because Stieglitz hit him more in the round. After the 4th, it got pretty to watch as Stieglitz was able to punch Weber at will without having to worry about much return fire. In the 10th round, Stieglitz fired off a nonstop salvo of quick combinations, landing almost every punch he threw in rapid fire for almost a minute. Shockingly, neither the referee nor Weber’s corner stopped the fight. The fight really needed to be stopped at that point because Weber was no longer competitive was taking some serious punishment.

Overall, I thought Stieglitz looked pretty good. I think he definitely one of the top 9 or 10 super middleweights, although I rate guys like Lucian Bute, Carl Froch, Mikkel Kessler, Andre Ward, Andre Dirrell, Anthony Dirrell, Arthur Abraham, Kelly Pavlik and Glen Johnson over him. I don’t think Stieglitz deserves to hold a belt and see him losing to Kessler in April when they fight.



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