Sturm-Geale: Felix trying to stay on top of the WBA mountain

By Boxing News - 07/29/2012 - Comments

Image: Sturm-Geale: Felix trying to stay on top of the WBA mountainBy Jason Kim: WBA super World middleweight champion Felix Sturm (37-2-2, 16 KO’s) has been showing signs of decline in the past year with his close call fights against Matthew Macklin and Martin Murray. Those fights showed that the 33-year-old Sturm is starting to look a lot more mortal than he’s ever looked.

Although Sturm was able to bounce back from the controversial fights to easily beat Sebastian Zbik last April in a 9th round stoppage, Sturm is now facing IBF middleweight champion Daniel Geale (27-1, 15 KO’s) on September 1st at the Koenig Pilsener Arena, Oberhausen, Nordhein-Westfalen, Germany.

Geale, 31, is another tough opponent for Sturm, and he likely would have opted to face someone else if he wasn’t due to fight his mandatory challenger Gennady Golovkin, a fighter with excellent one punch power. Sturm and his team decided not to go with the Golovkin fight, and instead get permission from the International Boxing Federation to face weaker punching Geale instead.

Since the sanctioning bodies let unification bouts go ahead of regular title defenses, Sturm was able to bypass the Golovkin fight and take on the weaker hitting Geale. That doesn’t mean that Geale isn’t a threat to knocking Sturm out or punishing him, because Geale has respectable power.

Geale knocked out Roman Karmazin in the 12th round in October 2010, and Karmazin has a decent chin. However, it’s still highly unlikely that Geale will be able to score a knockout against Sturm because his defense is so solid and he does a great job of boxing behind a stiff jab. Sturm’s jab is perhaps the best in the entire middleweight division. Sturm needs little else but his jabs most of the time because it’s such a valuable weapon for him.

Geale can find power when he needs to, and Sturm is going to have to stay on the alert for the big uppercuts from Geale because he can punch with authority at times.



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