By Erik Schmidt: WBA middleweight champion Felix Sturm (31-2-1, 13 KOs) makes his 6th defense of his title on April 25th against his WBA number #14th ranked challenger Koji Sato (14-0, 13 KOs) in a non-mandatory defense at the König Palast, Krefeld, in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. Sturm, 30, following his custom to pick at the bottom of the top 15 field when choosing his non-mandatory opponents, has chosen the hard-punching but terribly inexperienced Sato with whom to fight on the 25th.
The choice, as expected, has been greeted with a great deal of criticism of fans and critics of Sturm’s, mainly because Felix has made it a practice of choosing the least threatening opponent possible when fighting his non-mandatory’s.
Having seen Sato fight on several occasions, I can see why he would be put into the top 15, because he has incredible punching power with both hands. Indeed, his knockout record isn’t only because of his poor opposition, it’s because he can downright punch.
As an amateur, Sato had a record of 133-3, 101 KOs. That’s an incredible amount of knockouts, and I can’t recollect a fighter right off hand that has a similar record. However, despite his power, he’s still a very raw fighter and needs a lot of work.
To start with, his hand speed is poor, and he fights in a straight up European style. His jab is slow and more of a pawing jab rather than thrown with conviction. He tends to tap away at his opponents with weak combinations and then suddenly increasing the power. Without a jab, and with his poor hand speed, it’s hard to say how he’ll do against Sturm.
Felix will obviously try to keep him at a distance and jab him into submission like he does with all his opponents. For Sato to be competitive with Sturm, he’s going to have to try and get close enough to land his short punches.
The good thing for Sato is that he’s able to throw incredibly powerful shots at a close distance and seems to do well when he’s letting both hands go in wild exchanges. Sturm will probably try and steer clear of mixing it up with him, but sooner or later he’s going to have to trade with this guy because from the fights I’ve seen of him, he’s good at cutting off the ring and forcing his opponents to fight him.
In Sato’s fight with David Koswara in August 2007, which ended with Sato stopping him in the 2nd round, he landed powerful body shots over and over again in both rounds. He seemed unconcerned with landing head shots for the most part. However, late in the second round, Sato suddenly threw a short right hand that landed on the top of Koswara’s head, knocking him to the canvas.
The fight was stopped as soon as Koswara made it to his feet as he stumbled around the ring like a drunk. It was impressive the way that Sato was able to generate so much power on such a short punch. His short arms are partly the reason for that, but also he just seems to be blessed with a lot of natural strength when it comes to throwing punches, although he doesn’t look all that powerful when looking at him.
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