By Jason Kim: World Boxing Association super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler (41-1, 31 KO’s) signed with German promotional company Sauerland Event today, so now Kessler is free of the entanglements from his former promoter Mogens Palle that has dragged on for months now keeping Kessler out of the ring since his last defense in October against Danilo Haussler.

Hopefully, the signing with Saurland is a good thing and will lead to Kessler fighting some good fights for a change. Kessler has faced two dull opponents back to back in Dimitri Sartison and Haussler. Things won’t get better immediately, however, because Kessler has to defend his title against little known Venezuelan Gusmyl Perdomo (16-2, 10 KO’s) next, which should be taking place in the next few months.

Perdomo, 31, is Kessler’s mandatory challenger. However, it’s hard to see how Perdomo got to that point because he’s beaten few notable fighters and was defeated by Sartison by a 10 round decision only two fights ago. Beyond that, Perdomo was also beaten by Mario Veit. Need I say more?

This will be an easy fight for Kessler and probably along the lines of Kessler’s win over Haussler in his last fight. If the fight with Perdomo doesn’t complicate matters and mess things up, Kessler will be fighting in the Showtime tournament starting in November against Andre Ward. The tournament has six fighters with Ward, Kessler, Andre Dirrell, Carl Froch, Jermain Taylor and Arthur Abraham all participating.

If Showtime can make the tournament happen, it will bring some excitement to the super middleweight division while at the same time give fighters like Kessler a lot of much needed exposure in the United States. The winner of the tournament, whoever that ends up being, will be a major star in the division.

As of now, there are no fighters that have been picked by the media to be the favorite to win the tournament. However, if push came to shove, Kessler would probably be the fighter that would emerge at the top of most of the media’s list of who will come out on top.

If this tournament were to have taken place a year or two ago, it would have been easy to pick Kessler, because he was clearly the number #2 fighter (aside from Joe Calzaghe, who likely wouldn’t be interested in a tournament like this) in the super middleweight division.

However, things have chanced in the past year with the maturing of Dirrell and Ward, and with Abraham moving up in weight from the middleweight division. It’s now hard to tell who the top fighter will be. International Boxing Federation super middleweight champion Lucian Bute won’t be participating in the tournament for one reason or another.

That’s a big loss, because Bute is considered to be right up there with Kessler in terms of talent. Having Bute in the tournament along with fighters like Librado Andrade, Sakio Bika, Allan Green and Karoly Balzsay would have made the end results of the tourney much more legitimate in picking a top fighter. Without those fighters participating, the champion that ends up winning the tournament will be seen largely as only the winner of the tourney and not as the overall best fighter in the division.