Abraham, 28, blasted an overwhelmed Marquez with a series of hard punches in the 6th round, leading to Marquez’s corner stopping the fight in between rounds due to a cut on the side of Marquez’s right eye. Abraham had fought cautiously for the first five rounds, but in the 6th he opened up with a flurry of hard punches to the head of Marquez, battering him throughout the round. It looked as if Abraham was just getting warmed up and was prepared to give Marquez more of the same if he had come out for the 7th round.
However, rather than continue fighting, Marquez’s corner stopped the fight after the 6th round, giving Abraham a relatively easy title defense.
Overall, the fight was mostly dull, as Abraham fought without intensity in the rounds one through five, jabbing mostly, staying on the outside and treating the light-hitting Marquez as if he were a knockout threat. However, despite fighting tentatively, Abraham was still much too strong and active for Marquez, who looked to be too small for the bigger Abraham.
Standing next to Abraham, Marquez looked closer to a light middleweight, whereas Abraham looked like a light heavyweight, no doubt after gaining weight after the weigh-in. Abraham landed a couple of hard flurries in the 3rd round, rushing forward and throwing his trademark flurries.
More often than not, most of Abraham’s punches missed badly when he would come in wildly like this, but it didn’t matter, the punches that did land were having an effect on Marquez who looked bothered when getting hit.
Marquez didn’t have the speed or counter punching ability to pick Abraham off when he would come rushing in wildly, but a good fighter like Bernard Hopkins, or possibly Kelly Pavlik, would give Abraham a lot of problems with his amateurish style of fighting.
At some point, Abraham is going to need to change his style or risk getting knocked out when he finally faces a well schooled fighter rather than the sluggers and low quality opponents he’s fought for most of his career. There was little action in the 5th round until the last seconds when Abraham rushed Marquez and hit him with several hard head shots.
Marquez had hit Abraham with some hard shots earlier in the round, which seemed to wake Abraham up, as he went after Marquez in the waning seconds of the round with power shots. In the 6th round, Abraham continued with his momentum from the previous round, coming at Marquez hard with power shots and motioning him forward, as if urging him to slug it out with him at close range.
It was easy for him to do, to be sure, because Marquez’s power was much less than Abraham, and he looked so much smaller than him. Abraham had a good round, hitting Marquez with a lot of hard shots to the head. It didn’t look good for Marquez as he went back to his corner, and I figured that he wouldn’t be able to fight hard for long without getting cut or stopped outright by Abraham. At the end of the round, the fight was stopped by Marquez’s corner.
After the bout, rather than calling out WBC/WBO middleweight champion, arguably still the best fighter in the division, Abraham chose to call out WBA Felix Sturm instead. It makes sense, though, because Pavlik’s name is still tainted somewhat after his recent one-sided loss to Hopkins.
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