By Aaron Klein: WBA super middleweight champion Anthony Mundine (32-3, 23 KOs) beat for the third time fellow Australian Sam Soliman (35-11, 13 KOs) by a 12-round unanimous decision on Wednesday night at the Vodafone Arena, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Other than money, there wasn’t much reason for the fight to take place in the first place, considering that Mundine, 33, had already twice beaten Soliman. Additionally, Soliman is ranked a lowly #14 in the WBA super middleweight division, making this another bout in which Mundine failed to defend his title against his number one challenger.

As for the fight, it was close with Soliman outworking Mundine for most of the bout, hitting him with combinations to the head and body, and using a lot of movement to stay out of the way of Mundine’s big right hand shots. However, Soliman, like in the previous fights, tired out as the rounds progressed, letting the slower Mundine catch up to him more and more with right hands as the fight moved to the middle rounds. As usual, Mundine’s jab and right hand were excellent as he showed that he’s not lost a thing in terms of his power game. He caught Soliman with some especially big right hands in rounds four through eight, and then eleventh and twelfth. It seemed as if every time that Soliman would slow down, Mundine would land something really big. However, he never came close to really hurting him like last time, in which Mundine knocked Soliman down three times en route to stopping him in the 9th in March 2007.

It seemed like Soliman was better prepared for his right hands, and would turn his head and lean back just as Mundine was landing. This is effect seemed to take a lot of the power out of the shots which looked incredibly hard. Mundine looked tired himself in the last three rounds of the fight, gasping for breath often and sweating badly. He looked in shape, however, but his stamina seemed to have taken a hit from last time I’d seen him fight.

Soliman needs to take some credit for that, for he was constantly working, circling Mundine and hitting him with a vast array of punches, seemingly from every angle. The crowd seemed to enjoy Soliman’s style of fighting much more than the slower, less animated and more ponderous Mundine, who fought as if he were looking for one shot to take Soliman out.

Mundine perhaps should have adjusted his game plan at some point when he saw that the knockout wasn’t going to happen, because Soliman, with his high work rate, was winning a lot of the rounds. In the end, Soliman made it very close and if he’d won a couple more of the middle rounds, he likely would have gotten the decision. Mundine was getting beaten to the punch in the earlier rounds, when Soliman was landing almost non-stop with flailing shots to the head of Mundine. Quite frequently, Soliman would come forward with both hands flailing, and would catch Mundine cleanly with multiple shots.

For his part, Mundine mostly was limited to one shot at a time, mostly right hands as he stalked Soliman around the ring, measuring him and unloaded occasionally with powerful rights. All in all, it was a good fight, much better than the last one and probably more exciting than what we’d have seen if Mundine had taken on one of the top fighters in the division. It’s probably a good thing that Mundine decided not to defend his title against Mikkel Kessler, because the way Mundine looked tonight against Soliman, he’d have lost easily to Kessler.

This will probably be Mundine’s last fight as a super middleweight, because he’s mentioned wanting to move down to the middleweight division where he hopes to take on one of the top fighters in the division, preferably Kelly Pavlik, Jermain Taylor or Winky Wright. Mundine also has interested in fighting former super middleweight champion Danny Green, whom he previously defeated in May 2006. However, Green has since retired from the sport, so it may take some serious persuading by Mundine to try and get him back in the ring.