When Is Felix Sturm Going to Fight a Live Opponent?

By Boxing News - 04/29/2009 - Comments

sturm32334By Jim Dower: After watching World Boxing Association middleweight champion beat yet another weak opponent in Koji Sato by a 7th round stoppage victory last Saturday night in Germany, I’m now almost entirely fed up with Sturm as a fighter and I’m wanting him to lose his title so that we can get a middleweight champion that seeks out some interesting matchups. I don’t mind a champion getting an easy fight every once in a great while, but when it becomes as regular as clockwork, then I’m put off by them and steer clear of their fights.

I’m not German, but if I was I certainly wouldn’t be wasting my time watching any of Sturm’s fights. The reason is simple: He always seeks out the weakest opponent that he can find when dealing with his non-mandatory title defenses, and it’s a total waste of time to even watch them.

What makes it even worse is that the WBA middleweight division is one of the weakest in boxing, reminding me a great deal how weak the WBO super middleweight division was for the 10 years that Joe Calzaghe held the title.

Since recapturing the WBA title in April 2007 with a controversial (I saw Sturm losing this fight by at least two rounds) 12-round unanimous decision victory over Spaniard Javier Castillejo, Sturm has defended the title six times against the following opponents: Noe Gonzalez Alcoba, Randy Griffin (twice), Jamie Pittman, Sebastian Sylvester, and most recently to Koji Sato last Saturday night.

I don’t know about you, but I think Sturm’s opponents have been god awful, and ones that I don’t even consider worthy of watching even it were on free television. How these guys can be ranked in the top 15 is beyond me, but they somehow are in the WBA. That’s what’s so telling about the division – it’s filled with a lot of fluff fighters and has champions that I consider middle of the road in regards to talent.

The thing of it is Sturm could easily do something about it by taking on the best possible opponent when seeking out his non-mandatory title defenses. He obviously has no control when defending against a mandatory challenger, but he sure can help himself by going after some better fighters than he’s faced thus far.

I know he never will, but I sure wish that he would stand up and fight a quality opponent. I see him as the weak link amount the three current middleweight champions. The middleweight division is going through a terrible period right now with basically zero fighters that are what I consider a top level fighter, but Sturm could at least try to lure one of the top super middleweights in to fighting him, someone like Lucian Bute, Mikkel Kessler or one of the up and coming fighters like Andre Ward or Andre Dirrell.

At least we’d see Sturm against a quality fighter rather than the typical weak opponents he’s faced in his two tours as a WBA middleweight champion. I doubt he’d beat them, since Sturm has had live and death battles against the likes of Castillejo and Griffin in the past few years.

The forty year-old Castillejo already knocked Sturm out three years ago in the 10th round in July 2006. Sturm got a rematch, and got gift decision to get his WBA title back a year later. Sturm also fought to a 12-round draw with American Randy Griffin in October 2007, a fight in which I saw Griffin winning 11 of the 12 rounds. The fight, naturally, was in Germany where Sturm lives and it was horrible decision. I felt sorry for Griffin, who should have easily the fight and instead had to settle for a draw.



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