By Jim Dower: According to Fight News, International Boxing Federation middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (29-0, 23 KOs) will be defending his IBF title against light-hitting German Mahir Oral (25-1-2, 10 KOs) on June 27th. The choice of opponent for Abraham leaves a lot to be desired, because Oral, 29, isn’t well known outside of Europe and even in his native Germany, he’s not a particularly popular fighter.

Ranked at number #11 in the IBF middleweight division, Oral would be a non-mandatory challenger for the 29-year-old Abraham. But what makes this as such a poor choice for Abraham is that it comes immediately after Abraham’s fight with little known Lajuan Simon in his last fight on March 14th 2009.

Abraham took a lot of heat for that fight, especially the way that he was unable to fight hard for more than 30 seconds of every round. Simon dominated many of the rounds by being the only one throwing punches during vast stretches of the fight with Abraham only throwing punches in the last seconds of the round to try and impress the judges. Undoubtedly, it worked because Abraham won by the lopsided scores of 117-110, 118-109 and 117-110 in a fight fought in Germany.

I saw the fight as a draw, but if I had to give it to anyone, I would have given Simon the nod because he did most of the work in every round. It was later discovered that Abraham had trouble making weight for the fight and had to take of a great deal of weight in the weeks leading up to the fight.

It is becoming harder and harder for the 29-year-old Abraham to make the 160 pound middleweight limit. Abraham has said that he wants to stay around long enough to fight WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik and then move up to super middleweight.

However, it’s unclear when that fight will be taking place in the future. Hopefully, Abraham and Pavlik can fight soon so that the boxing fans are saved from having to see mismatches of this kind with Abraham fighting Oral next month.

I’ve seen Oral fight on a couple of occasions against Alexander Sipos and Joel Mayo. Oral struggled badly in his first fight with Sipos in May 2008, getting hit a lot by the brawling Sipos. In their rematch in November 2008, Oral fought much better, using his jab and foot movement to avoid getting hit as much.

Oral’s style of fighting is similar to WBA middleweight champion Felix Sturm, only without the excellent jab and right hand. Oral looks like a watered down version of Sturm. It’s a disappoint choice for Abraham if his goal was to be better known in the U.S. and to pick up boxing fans.

Abraham cold have chosen someone like Peter Quillen, Billy Lyell, Roman Karmazin, John Duddy or Fulgencio Zuniga if he wanted to interest fans in the United States a little more. I realize that Duddy and Zuniga have recently been beaten, but they still would be a lot more appealing to fans than the little known Oral.

Lyell, who recently defeated Duddy, would be a heck of a challenge for Abraham. If Abraham fought the same way he did against Simon last time out, I see Lyell beating Abraham.