By Erik Schmidt: IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (30-0, 24 KO’s) continued with his recent struggles in defending his crown, this time having to battle hard to defeat challenger Mahir Oral (25-2-2, 10 KO’s) by a 10th round TKO on Saturday night at the Max Schmeling Halle, in Berlin, Germany.
Abraham, 29, got hit a lot in the early part of the fight, but his power bailed him out at the end when he dropped Oral three times in the 10th before the bout was finally stopped when Oral’s corner threw in the towel. Oral was knocked down five times in the fight, starting in the 4th round, then the 6th and finally three times in the 10th. It was as if Abraham was able to hurt him at any time he wanted.
However, in between all those knockdowns, Abraham was getting hit a lot, giving away many of the rounds and not always dominating like he had earlier in his career. If this was Abraham’s strategy to fight only in brief bursts it’s a bad habit for him to be doing, because not every opponent that he faces will be vulnerable to his power shots and he’ll eventually find himself in a situation where he’ll need to outwork his opponent.
In a way, Abraham is now fighting a lot like cruiserweight champion Tomasz Adamek, a fighter that throws few punches nowadays but is still winning because of his ability to knock out his opponents with the few punches that he does throw.
Oral was jabbing, and landing right hands in the first four rounds. Many of his punches were blocked on the arms of Abraham, but still many of them hit home and connected. It was a numbers game for Oral, who wasn’t even trying to load up on his shots as he just focused on throwing a lot of punches.
Abraham knocked Oral down late in the 4th with a right hand. The punch was a surprise, because Abraham hadn’t been throwing very hard up until the point where he landed that punch and he seemed to have taken Oral by surprise with it. Abraham seemed unconcerned with scoring a knockout in the 5th, and was more content with just landing his head shots.
However, in the 6th, Abraham loaded up with another big shot and dropped Oral with a nice right hand with a little more than a minute left in the round. Both fighters took turns trading shots in rounds seven through nine, blocking shots but firing off a lot of punches.
Abraham got the better of the action with his big power shots, but he was still getting hit quite a lot at the same time. In the 10th round, Oral looked tired and went down easily after getting hit with a left hand. The punch wasn’t even close to being as hard as the other prior shots that Abraham had been landing.
After the knockdown, Abraham still wasn’t loading up on his shots as if he wanted to keep Oral in the fight. But Oral went down anyway after getting hit by a combination from Abraham. Oral was finished off by Abraham after this, getting hit with several more average punches that sent Oral down for the third time in the round. His corner then threw in the towel.
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In other action, cruiserweight contender Enad Licina (17-1, 10 KO’s) defeated Mexican Ignacio Esparza (15-1, 11 KO’s) by a 12-round unanimous decision, handing the 32-year-old Esparza his first defeat of his career. Licina, 29, ranked #9 in the WBA, #11 in the IBF and #13 in the WBC, overcame a bad start in which he appeared to lose the first four rounds to come on in the second half of the fight and wear Esparza down.
However, it wasn’t a fight that Licina looked good in because Esparza was the type of opponent that has a way of making fighters look bad by lowering his hands and taunting. Licina’s normally powerful punches had no effect on Esparza, who shook his head when Licina would load up with his shots.
Esparza fired back a lot of heavy shots to the head and body through much of the fight before fading badly in the last three rounds. The final judges’ scores were 117-111, 116-112 and 117-111.
In rounds one through three, Esparza stayed on top of Licina, hitting him with big shots to the head and body at close range. Esparza looked really good for a fighter his age. His considtioning, however, wasn’t all that great, because Esparza came into the fight sporting a thick midsection that looked as if he was somewhat out of shape by 20 to 30 pounds.
It’s scary to think what Esparza might have done had he been slender and in tip top condition, because Licina had big problems in each of the first three rounds and was getting hit a lot. Licina couldn’t match Esparza’s work rate during this part of the fight. In most of Licina’s fights, his opponents are bowled over by his big power shots.
However, Esparza seemed unimpressed with his power and often lowered both his hands to his sides and let Licina hit him. It may not have been the smartest thing to do, but it proved that Licina was going to have to work much harder for this fight than he had in many of his previous fights.
Licina got the better of Esparza starting in the 4th, when Esparza began to lower his hands to his sides and let Licina hit him. Esparza looked to be tiring and was fighting now in brief spurts rather than working hard during the first three rounds.
Never the less, the 4th round was very close, because Esparza landed a number of big head and body shots during the round. In the 5th and 6th rounds, Esparza’s work rate dropped even more, and he began too look tired all of a sudden.
In the 6th round, Esparza gave away the first two minutes of the round to Licina, but then came on in the last minute and landed a flurry of big shots to the head and body in an effort to steal the round. It might have worked had he done a little more in the first two minutes, though.
Licina badly outworked Esparza in the 7th and 8th rounds, throwing a high number of power shots as he tried to take the Mexican fighter out. By the 9th round, Esparza’s punch output had dropped to a small trickle, and his whole focus now was on trying to make Licina look bad by shaking his head when Licnia would land, as if to say ‘you can’t punch.’
It did look bad, because as out of shape as Esparza was, he still was causing some problems for Licina. In rounds 10 and 11, Licina gamely tries to take Esparza out by unloading on him with a high number of power shots, but none of them had any effect on him. In the 12th, Esparza emptied out his fuel tanks by unloading on Licina with a huge amount of big right hands and succeeded in winning the round and finishing the fight on a strong note.