By Erik Schmidt: WBA middleweight champion Felix Sturm (28-2-1, 12 KOs) will put his title on the line against #12 ranked challenger Jamie Pittman (16-0, 7 KOs) this Saturday at the Burg-Waechter Castello, in Dusseldorf, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. Sturm, 29, is coming off a controversial draw in his last fight against his mandatory challenger Randy Griffin in October 2007. Instead of giving Griffin a much-needed rematch, the German-based Sturm has opted to take on the 26 year-old undefeated Australian Pittman, who is largely unproven having fought mostly lower level fighters in Australia.
While there’s some that are saying (mostly Australian fans) that Pittman has a good chance at beating Sturm, that seems nothing more than a pipe dream because Sturm is clearly the favorite against the untested Pittman. In fact, I see this fight as more of another one of Sturm’s easy title defenses against unknown fighters. Sturm has been disappointing champion since winning his WBA middleweight title back in March 2006 with a win over Maselino Masoe. Rather than taking on a big-named fighter like Winky Wright, Kelly Pavlik, Jermain Taylor or John Duddy, Sturm was content to fight Spaniard Javier Castillejo in his first defense, who promptly knocked a seemingly overconfident Sturm out in the 10th round on July 15th, 2006.
Sturm then bided his time with an easy win over journeyman Gavin Topp in December 2006. Afterwards, Sturm again faced Castillejo in a rematch held on April 28th, 2007, and beat him by a unanimous decision to recapture the title. Though Sturm would get the victory, he still was largely unimpressive in the bout and appeared lucky to have escaped with the win, for the fight looked more like a draw than a victory for Sturm. Yet the fact that Sturm was forced the fight hard to eek out a decision wasn’t a good thing given the fact that he was expected to have easily have beaten Castillejo in their first fight a year earlier.
For those people that had assumed that the former Olympian Sturm was simply too good for an aged 36 year-old Castillejo, they were forced to re-think their opinions after the second fight in which Sturm failed to prove that he was the overall better fighter between the two. Unfortunately, there would be no third fight between the two, for Sturm would turn around and defend his WBA title against a badly inexperienced challenger Noe Tulio Gonzalez Alcoba, who Sturm easily beat as expected by a 12-round unanimous decision in June 2007.
Sturm seemed to make up for this soft defense by taking on his mandatory challenger Randy Griffin in October 2007, a fight that was ruled a draw. However, Sturm appeared to lose the fight by at least four to five rounds, possibly more than that. He was out-punched in every round by a wide margin by Griffin, and was limited mostly to throwing jabs on occasion. Sturm’s jabs, as usual, were quite excellent but he was being pounded non-stop by Griffin who was hitting Sturm with left and right hands repeatedly without anything meaningful coming back in return.
By the 10th round, I figured the win was in the bag for Griffin for he seemed to have won nine of ten rounds at that point of the fight. He would clearly win the 11th round in my view before coasting in the final round of the fight. However, one judge incredibly scored the fight in his favor by 115-114, another 114-114 and the final judge ruling it in Griffin’s favor by 117-111 score. I was perfectly comfortable with the final judge’s score, although I saw that as being far too generous to Sturm who had done next to nothing in the fight. Whatever, the case, Sturm didn’t give Griffin a rematch. I can’t say I was surprised by that because he was just going along with what he’d done in the past by not giving a rematch to Castillejo after their close fight.
As for Pittman’s chances of winning against Sturm on Saturday, they’re not good to say the least. Sturm will do what he always does, namely stay on the outside and shoot his world class jab over and over against Pittman and pound out an easy decision. The fight will be in Germany, meaning that unless Pittman does something extraordinary, like knock Sturm down three or four times, I see Sturm winning by a wide margin. This is a huge step up for Pittman in terms of class and it doesn’t seem fair to him to be taking such a huge leap up against a fighter like Sturm.
Prediction: Sturm by a lopsided 12-round unanimous decision.