Arthur Abraham in tough fight against Wilczewski on March 31st

February 22nd, 2012

By Sean McDaniel: 32-year-old former IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (33-3, 27 KO’s) has a tough 12 round fight next month against former EBU super middleweight champion Piotr Wilczewski (30-2, 10 KO’s) at the Kiel, Scheleswig-Holstein, Germany. Abraham will be defending his World Boxing Organization (WBO) European super middleweight title in this fight, and he needs a win over the 33-year-old Wilczewski to get a shot at the winner of the April 14th fight between WBO super middleweight champion Robert Stieglitz and Mikkel Kessler.

It was thought that Abraham would continue to take soft touches to ensure that he’s in the position to face the Kessler-Stieglitz winner, but his promoters have decided to put him in with the dangerous Wilczewski to put him in a real test. I like this fight but I can see Abraham losing if he’s not able to get Wilczewski out of there. Wilczewski did lose a 12 round majority decision to James DeGale last October, but a lot of boxing fans saw Wilczewski as having done more than enough to get a decision in that fight. I’m in agreement with them. I saw Wilczewski beating DeGale by a couple of rounds due to his work rate and the punishment he dished out against the British fighter with his hard right hand and left hooks.

Abraham might be biting off more than he can chew in this fight. Wilczewski is a solid fighter with good power and an excellent chin. You can ignore his low knockout percentage. Wilczewski has much better power than what his record suggests. He’s one of those guys that has heavy hands and gives his opponents beatings en route to winning decisions and/or knockouts victories. Abraham is going to have to bring a lot more to this fight than he showed in his recent win over Pablo Oscar Natalio Farias last January. Abraham didn’t look improved at all from the three losses he suffered in the Super Six tournament to Andre Dirrell, Carl Froch and Andre Ward.

Wilczewski is coming off of an eight round split decision win over Geard Ajetovic on February 17th. I saw the fight and had Wilczewski easily winning the fight. It wasn’t a close fight at all.