Kessler vs. Sartison On June 21

By Boxing News - 05/07/2008 - Comments

kessler446767767.jpgBy Nate Anderson: Former WBA/WBC super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler (39-1, 29 KOs) will be taking on undefeated Dimitri Sartison (22-0, 14 KOs) for the vacant WBA super middleweight title on June 21st at the Brondby Hallen, in Copenhagen, Denmark. Kessler, 29, had been on course to challenger WBA super middleweight title holder Anthony Mundine for the title, but Mundine opted to take on Sam Soliman in a rematch, which would have made it the fourth fight since winning the title in March 2007 that Mundine would have failed to defend his title against his number #1 challenger.

This opened up the title for Kessler to fight Sartison, an unbeaten fighter from Kazakhstan, who has fought largely no one while building up his unbeaten record. Kessler had previously been in negotiations to fight former middleweight contender Edison Miranda, but after going back and forth with ESPN for weeks, Kessler backed out, hoping to fight Mundine for the title. With Mundine off the table, Kessler was left with the little-known Sartison, 28, ranked #4 in the WBA, as his opponent for the title.

Despite his high ranking, Sartison has fought virtually no one of note, except for perhaps Argentinean Pablo Daniel Zamora Nievas, who Sartison beat by an 8th round TKO in his last bout on February 23rd. Sartison’s style is similar to fellow German-based WBA middleweight champion Felix Sturm, in that Sartison likes to throw a lot of jabs much of the time. The difference between them being that Sartison has excellent power with either hand and tends to throw sharp combinations.

At the same time, he doesn’t run like Sturm and prefers to stand in front of his opponents, setting them up with his jab for his powerful left-right combinations. As far as his speed goes, he’s clearly slower than Kessler and doesn’t have nearly the same boxing skills or movement as the Danish fighter. This is going to be a huge step up for Sartison, who probably should be ranked much lower than the #4 spot considering his lack of top level opposition. One would like to have seen him beat at least a couple of good B level fighters before being thrust into a title shot, because he’s going to be in over his head with this one. However, Sartison has excellent power, as I mentioned earlier, which will give him a chance of catching Kessler with something and perhaps knocking him out.

Sartison is a much disciplined fighter and with his powerful jab, he’ll be sure to give Kessler more problems than he’s had in most of his fights thus far in his career. Based on the several fights I’ve seen of Sartison, he’s around the level of Mundine, perhaps a little a little better due to the way he fights intelligently, not trying to simply slug it all the time. Still, Kessler, 29, will likely prevail in the bout and will once again have his WBA title back in his possession.

It’s really unfortunate that Kessler didn’t take the fight with the knockout artist Miranda, for that would have been an exciting bout and would have likely increased his stature among American fans, which would have been able to see the fight on ESPN. Instead, Kessler will be fighting another European fighter and no one other than Europe will see the fight. Perhaps not the smartest move on Kessler’s part, but he can be excused for the decision because he was hoping originally to fight for the title against Mundine, a fighter that is popular in many countries, although not in America.