By Scott Gilfoid: WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (39-4, 28 KO’s) is talking about wanting to attempt to avenge his humiliating loss to the talented Andre Ward from 2011 when the two fighters were fighting in Showtime’s Super Six tournament. Abraham entered the tournament after years of fighting mostly weak opposition as the IBF middleweight champion, and he quickly found out that he didn’t have nearly the talent to be competing with the talented fighters in the 168lb division.
After getting thrashed in three of his four fights in the tournament, Abraham has rebuilt his career thanks to some careful match-making by his promoters, and he recently picked up the WBO super middleweight title off of what many boxing fans considered to be the weak link among the 168lb champions in Robert Stieglitz.
“I am still aiming to take revenge for some of my losses, like against Andre Ward. But now, it is all about beating Sjekloca on May 3.”
Ward beat Abraham by a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores of 120-108, 118-110, and 118-111. I honestly didn’t see Abraham come close to winning one round in that fight.
It makes good headlines with Abraham saying he’s interested in fighting Ward again, but I don’t see it happening. Abraham’s promoters did a good job of looking for the weak link among the four super middleweight champions to get Abraham his title by matching him against Stieglitz, but there are no more easy marks for Abraham to get a strap off of if he faces Ward again. Abraham would have to melt down to 160 if he wanted to try and win another strap, and I don’t think he can do that at this late state in his career.
Abraham will be defending his WBO strap this Saturday, May 3rd against the recently beaten Nikola Sjekloca (26-1, 8 KO’s) at The Velodrom, Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, Germany. Abraham is back to his old ways of taking the easy path when facing optional title defenses, because the 35-year-old Sjekloca was recently beaten by Sakio Bika last year. I mean, why fight a guy who was just beaten? I’m frankly surprised the WBO sanctioned this mismatch because they should have some kind of standards for title defenses, even the optional ones. Sjekloca has fought one decent opponent in his career and he lost to him when he was beaten by Bika.
Abraham has fought Stieglitz several times in the past two years, and it looks like he’s interested in fighting him a fourth time.
“We [Abraham and Stieglitz] have given the fans an action-packed fight recently and I can envision that we can still give them another good fight,” Abraham said. “However, if it will come this far – I do not now. First, Stieglitz has to earn the chance to make it happen. Maybe he has to go up against someone like Tyron Zeuge, who might be too much for Stieglitz to overcome.”
So basically Stieglitz only has to beat Zeuge to get a fourth fight with him. Zeuge, 21, is ranked #11 by the World Boxing Organization, and he’s not faced any quality opposition yet. I think it’s safe to say that Stieglitz and Abraham will be fighting a fourth time if all Stieglitz has to beat is beat the German fighter Zeuge. Why isn’t Abraham asking Stieglitz to beat someone like #2 WBO James DeGale or #1 WBO Julio Cesar Chavez Jr? I’m wondering how many times Abraham and Stieglitz will wind up facing each other before they retire.
Comments are closed.