By Erik Schmidt: Making his first defense of his WBA super middleweight title, champion Mikkel Kessler (41-1, 31 KOs) easily stopped his number #1 mandatory challenger Danilo Haussler (29-4-1, 7 KOs) in the 3rd round of scheduled 12-round bout on Saturday night at the Weser-Ems-Halle, in Oldenburg, Niedersachsen, Germany. Kessler, 29, landed a three punch combination in the third round, ending with a hard left hand that put Haussler down on the canvas. He rolled over and tried to get up but was quickly counted out by referee Stanley Christodoulou at 1:08 of the 3rd.
At the time that Kessler landed the left hand, Haussler was trying to throw a left hand of his own and probably never saw Kessler’s punch coming. Haussler’s left eye was badly swollen up, and if the fight had gone on much longer, it very likely would have closed completely from all the punches he was getting hit with. Kessler, who normally likes to mix his punches up well, largely threw almost exclusively jabs for the entire three rounds. Every so often, he would add in a left hook to the body or a right hand to the head or midsection, but for the most part he seemed dialed in on his jab. That’s all he really needed, however, because Haussler, though ranked #1 in the WBA super middleweight division, looked totally limited as a fighter, and nothing like a typical top ranked challenger.
To be fair, Haussler did have a first rate jab, which he threw – and landed – quite often to the head of Kessler, but beyond that, he had no other weapons to fall back on to use against the vastly superior Kessler. His size, 5’10” compared to the 6’1″ Kessler, meant that he was going to be on the receiving end of most of the Dane’s punches during the night. He chose to stay just in the punching range of Kessler instead of moving around and trying to prevent him from getting off his bigger shots. Both fighters traded jabs in the first round, and Haussler did a remarkably good job of matching him jab for jab in the round.
However, Kessler’s jab was having a major effect on Haussler’s left eye, causing it to redden and swell. It didn’t help Haussler’s case that he has tiny eyes that look as if they’ve already been punched and swollen even without getting hit. I figured going into the bout, it probably wouldn’t take much for Kessler to close one or both of Haussler’s slit-like eyes after a round or two. As it turns out, I was correct in my prediction.
After the first round, Kessler stepped up the pace of his own jabs, throwing even more of them to the face and body of Haussler. This had the effect of shutting down Haussler’s own offense, as he tried to cover up and block some of the incessant incoming jabs from Kessler. The third round was all Kessler, as Haussler came out for the beginning of the round already looking like a defeated fighter, with his left eye purple and closing rapidly.
Kessler continued feeding him a steady diet of jabs, softening up his facial features some more. Finally, he landed a left-right, followed by a big left that dropped Haussler on the canvas. He rolled over, but was badly hurt and not in the condition to get up and continue fighting. The referee then moved in and called a halt to the bout at 1:08 of the third round.
With Haussler finally out of the way, hopefully Kessler can move on to taking on more interesting opponents like Carl Froch. Recently defeated Kelly Pavlik would also be an interesting opponent, as would Jermain Taylor, Jean Pascal or possibly middleweight Arthur Abraham.