Arthur Abraham vs. Giovanni De Carolis this Saturday in Germany

By Boxing News - 10/21/2013 - Comments

abraham445By Allan Fox: Former two division world champion Arthur Abraham (37-4, 28 KO’s) will be returning to the ring this Saturday night against #13 IBF Giovanni De Carolis (20-4, 10 KO’s) in title defense of Abraham’s WBO Inter-Continental super middleweight title at the EWE-Arena, Oldenburg, Niedersachsen, Germany. Abraham, #1 WBO, is using this fight as tune-up of sorts to get him ready for his third fight against WBO super middleweight champion Robert Stieglitz in early 2014.

Stieglitz has done his part to make the Abraham third fight by taking two easy fights against Yuzo Kiyota and Isaac Ekpo, beating both of them quite easily. For his part, Abraham almost blew it in what was supposed to be an easy fight for him against Whlbeforce Shihepo last August. Abraham barely won the fight by a 12 round unanimous decision. I take that back. Abraham didn’t barely win it as far as the judges are concerned, because they gave him the win by the scores 116-113, 117-111 and 116-112. But as far as boxing fans go, Abraham was beaten soundly by Shihepo. It just goes to show you how difficult it is to beat Abraham when he’s fighting at home in his adopted country of Germany.

Abraham has slowly been rebuilding his career since his disastrous showing in the Super Six tournament in 2010-2011. Abraham was beaten by Andre Dirrell, Carl Froch and Andre Ward, leaving his career in tatters. Just when it looked like it was all over for Abraham, his German promoters turned things around for him by matching him against a series of easy opponents in Pablo Farias, Piotr Wilczewski, and Mehdi Boudla.

The first fight with Stieglitz proved to be an easy one for Abraham at the time because Stieglitz was considered the weakest of the super middleweight champions by many fans at the time that Abraham fought him. Abraham dominated Stiegltiz, beating him by a 12 round unanimous in August of 2012. In their second fight that took place last March, Stieglitz came out fast and threw nonstop punches for four rounds until the fight was halted following the 4th round due to Abraham’s right eye swelling up and closing.

Abraham waited too long to get his own offense going and it resulted in him sustaining too much damage in the course of the short fight. When Abraham faces Stieglitz next year, he’s going to have to start out much quicker and focus on throwing punches at the same time that Stieglitz does instead of covering up and waiting for him to stop throwing his shots.

De Carolis, 29, is going to need to step on the gas in this fight the same way that Stieglitz did in beating Abraham. If De Carolis fights in a slow pattern like he did in his recent wins over Roman Shkarupa, Attila Baran and Artem Solomko, then he’ll get taken apart by Abraham. The fight is going to be difficult enough as it is for De Carolis to win because he’s never fought anyone as good as Abraham before during his 6-year pro career, and it’s going to be a considerable step up for him. It’s definitely possible for De Carolis to beat Abraham, but he’s going to have to come out fast and throw as many punches as he can for the first 5-6 rounds if he’s to have any chance at winning.



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