By Erik Schmidt: Unbeaten heavyweight prospect Sebastian Koeber (18-0, 13 KOs) stopped Jean Claude Bikoi (15-11-1, 8 KOs) in the 10th round of an action packed bout on Friday night at the Sporthalle, Austerdorf, in Hamburg, Germany. Koeber, 29, a former amateur star from Germany, staggered Bikoi with a powerful right hand at the end of the 2nd, causing Bikoi to almost fall and have to grab onto Koeber to prevent from falling. And then in the 10th, Koeber landed a huge right hand in the opening minute of the round to put Bikoi down. He was able to get up, but staggered around and the fight was immediately called off at 1:02 of the round.
Koeber, who has some of the best power in the heavyweight, was hurt early in the 8th by series of big hooks from Bikoi. However, Koeber was able to recover from the shot and return fire with hard combinations for the remainder of the round.
In rounds three through seven, Koeber landed hard right hand shots and left hooks to the head mostly. I got to give Bikoi some credit for taking all the punishment he did during these rounds, because Koeber was hitting him with some monstrous shots, the kind that would have knocked out 99% of the heavyweights in the division.
However, Bikoi took the shots round after round despite not doing much of his own offensively. It almost paid off for him when in the 7th round Koeber began to shown signs of tiring out from having thrown so many punches in the earlier rounds. Bikoi began to land more and more with big, slow hooks to the head. However, in each case Koeber was able to get some distance and start throwing his hurtful jabs and shut Bikoi down.
With his big power, Koeber can possibly be a factor in the heavyweight division if his chin improves a little. He has true one punch power and is able to stop an opponent at any time in the fight if he can land. He has one of the best jabs I’ve seen in the heavyweight division, second only to Wladimir Klitschko.
Indeed, Koeber’s jabs are like mini power punches and do a lot of damage when he connects with them. His chin, however, is his weakness, as was the case in the amateurs. At 29, he needs to make a move soon to start facing better competition because he’s too old to be still fighting lower level fighters like this.
Then again, maybe it’s a good thing he’s still matched up against marginal talent because he would have bad problems if he had faced a good opponent rather than Bikoi on Friday night.
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