By Erik Schmidt: In a battle between two jabbers on Saturday night, WBA middleweight champion Felix Sturm (31-2-1, 13 KOs) won an excruciatingly dull 12-round unanimous decision over challenger Sebastian Sylvester (29-3, 14 KOs) at the Koenig Pilsener Arena, in Oberhausen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. The final judges’ scores were 119-109, 118-110 and 118-110. Sylvester, 28, the number#1 contender in the WBA, seemed to play into Sturm’s style of fighting by trying to box with a boxer, and ended up getting badly out-jabbed by him and easily defeated.
In hindsight, Sylvester would have been better served if he had taken a closer look at Sturm’s bouts versus Randy Griffin and Javier Castillejo, both of whom used a high volume attack and inside fighting to give Sturm tremendous problems. Sylvester, though, chose to fight on the outside, trying to match Sturm jab for jab and coming up short. The fight might as well have been stopped in the first round, because Sylvester’s game plan was doomed for failure from the very beginning. At times in the past, he’s shown the ability to adapt to his opponent.
However, that wasn’t the case against Sturm on Saturday night. Sylvester seemed to stubbornly stick to trying to box with Sturm, despite the fact that it was painfully obvious that he didn’t have the boxing skills, hand speed or a good enough jab to contend with Sturm in that style of fighting. Sylvester did fight marginally well in the first round, and landed some good right hands, but it wasn’t enough to win the round. I thought Sebastian did well enough in the 3rd round to win it, as he was able to hit Sturm with some good right hands after briefly abandoning his safety-first style of fighting.
In rounds four through six, Sturm hit Sylvester frequently with hard jabs, causing his face to swell under both eyes. Sturm also was beginning to show swellings under his right eye from Sylvester’s good jabs. It likely would have been much worse if Sylvester had the presence of mind to throw more right hands and try to get Sturm out of there. Instead, though, he stuck to throwing jabs, boring the crowd who seemed to grow increasingly restless as the rounds went by one by one.
Sturm, 29, likes nothing better than to fight his bouts using his jab exclusively, looked overjoyed to see the normally power punching Sylvester reduced to throwing jabs and trying to box rather than slug it out. In rounds eight through twelve, little changed in the bout other than the features of both fighters. Jabs continued to be the main weapon by both, with a rare hook or power punch sprinkled in between.
The German crowd mostly looked around the audience, perhaps wishing for the dull fight to end quickly so that they could head for the exits. Ultimately, Sylvester went out with a whimper, choosing to throw mostly jabs in the last two rounds despite the fact that he was hopelessly behind in the fight and needed a knockout to win. With this victory, Sturm continued on as WBA champion, and from the looks of the rather poor division, he might stay that way for some time. As of now, only Anthony Mundine would figure to give him any trouble.