Abraham 167.6, Stieglitz 167.3 – Official Weights

By Boxing News - 07/17/2015 - Comments

abraham545(Photo Credit: Sebastian Heger) By Scott Gilfoid: 35-year-old WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (42-4, 28 KOs) successfully made weight today, coming in at 167.6 pounds for his title defense against former WBO 168lb champion Robert Stieglitz (47-4-1, 27 KOs) on Saturday night at the Gerry Weber Stadium, Halle, Nordrhein-Westfalen.

Stieglitz weighed in at 167.3lbs. He says he knows how to beat Abraham. The plan will likely revolve around Stieglitz throwing nonstop punches for three minutes of every round. It worked for Stieglitz in his second fight against Abraham in 2013, but it failed last year, when Stieglitz gassed out in the last four rounds and lost a 12 round split decision.

“This is the end,’’ said Abraham. ‘’There will be no fifth fight. I’ve trained extremely hard and I’m ready for whatever Robert has to offer. After Saturday, there will be no questions remaining. I will prove once and for all that I’m the better boxer.’’

Yeah, I bet this is the end of the Abraham-Stieglitz. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if they face each other another four to five more times. It is easy money for them, as the German boxing public enjoys their fights and don’t seem to mind that they’re not fighting the other quality fighters in the division like Andre Ward and Andre Dirrell.

They’re not holding Abraham and Stieglitz’s feet to the fire to force them to fight the quality guys at 168. I mean, look at the kinds of guys that the two are fighting in between their many rematches. Abraham faces Paul Smith twice, while Stieglitz fights Felix Sturm.

If Stieglitz can outwork Abraham in the first six rounds, then there’s a good chance he’ll be able to recapture the WBO title, as long as the judges don’t weigh Abraham’s heavier shots as more meaningful than the high volume shots that Stieglitz will be raining on Abraham for 12 continuous rounds. Stieglitz appeared to do enough to deserve a decision win against Abraham in their fight in 2014, but the judges gave Abraham the win based on him landing the cleaner shots despite the fact that Stieglitz out-landed him in virtually every round of the fight.

That’s what makes it so hard to beat Abraham by decision. You can outwork him by a wide margin, but if he landed even a tiny amount of hard punches, he stands a chance of winning the rounds. Abraham tends to attack in the last 10 to 20 seconds of every round in order to impress the judges.

It’s a trick he always does, and it’s something that his opposition has rarely figured out. One way of keeping Abraham from landing his flurries in the last 20 seconds is to use movement in order to outsmart him, but I’ve only see a couple of fighters ever do this against him. They mainly just stand in front of him in the waning seconds of each round making it easy for him to steal rounds.

This is Abraham’s fourth fight against the 34-year-old Stieglitz in the past three years. The World Boxing Organization hasn’t stood in their way to keep the two German based fighters from going back and forth fighting each other over and over again. It’s gotten to the point where the two of them are mainly fighting each other nowadays. When they do face other opposition in between their constant rematches, they’re facing weak opponents that don’t have much of a chance of tripping them up and ending their rematch cycle.

Official weights:

Arthur Abraham 167.6 vs Robert Stieglitz 167.3
Vincent Feigenbutz 166.2 vs Mauricio Reynoso 167.6
Noel Gevor 197.8 vs Lukasz Rusiewicz 201.7
Mike Keta 161.6 vs Aliklych Kanbolatov 159.2
Stefan Haertel 168.7 vs Maurice Possiti 168.7
Anthony Ogogo 161.4 vs Ruslan Schelev 162.9
Enrico Koelling 174.8 vs Vasyl Kondor 176.4
Leon Bauer 165.3 vs Misa Nikolic TBA



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