By Erik Schmidt: World Boxing Association super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler (41-1, 31 KO’s) will be forced to make a mandatory defense of his WBA title against his number #1 challenger Gusmyl Perdomo (16-2, 10 KO’s) on September 12th at the Messecenter, in Herning, Denmark. By the time that Kessler fights Perdomo, Kessler will have been out of action for almost a year.

The last time he fought was in October 2008 against Danilo Haussler. Since then, Kessler has been involved with legal problems with his former promoter. The fight against Perdomo leaves Kessler only two months time off before he’s to participate in Showtime’s’ Super Six tournament in November.

Kessler will be getting arguably the toughest opponent of the tournament in the undefeated former 2004 Olympic Gold Medalist Andre Ward, who is currently ranked number #1 in the WBC and is being picked by many boxing experts to be one of the finalists in the six-man super tourney.

However, Kessler needs to make sure he doesn’t get tripped up by Perdomo in September. Although a loss to Perdomo wouldn’t disqualify Kessler for the tournament, it would leave a bad stain on Kessler’s career. However, the chances of Perdomo beating Kessler are rather slim.

Perdomo hasn’t beaten any quality fighters in the top 15, and has been beaten twice when he attempted to step up against Mario Veit and Dmitri Sartison. Kessler easily defeated Sartison by a 12th round knockout a year ago in June 2008. Based on the lack of quality fighters that Perdomo has faced in his career, it’s rather strange that he’s ranked so high in the WBA.

Based on the opponents that he’s faced and the problems that he’s had when facing decent fighters, Perdomo would seem to be more of a 2nd tier fighter rather than a top 5 five opponent. I certainly find it hard to believe that he’s ranked higher than more established super middleweight contenders like Denis Inkin, Andre Ward and Karo Murat. The WBA seems to need to work out the kinks in their ranking system because moves like this make them look bad. Perdomo will probably be lucky if he can get to the sixth round against Kessler. This fight has mismatch written all over it.

Kessler, 30, is now promoted by the German promotional company Sauerland and will be looking to make a good impression in his first fight with the new company.

Brook to fight Jennings

Undefeated welterweight contender Kell Brook (20-13 KO’s) will be fighting former British champion Michael Jennings (35-2, 17 KO’s). The two fighters have come to an agreement for a fight, although there’s still no date for the fight as of yet. Brook, 23, destroyed Michael Lomax in a 3rd round TKO on July 18th. Ranked number #6 in the World Boxing Organization, Brook is on his way up in the world rankings and a fighter that may have the talent to compete against WBO champion Miguel Cotto.

Jennings, 31, already has his shot against Cotto, but was annihilated in a 5th round stoppage in February 2009. Brook, the British champion, doesn’t need to fight Jennings because they seem to be going in different directions, but Brook wants the fight for bragging rights.

It should be a good test for him, because if he can take out Jennings as quick as Cotto did, it should give him a good barometer of how he compares to the Puerto Rican star. Jennings doesn’t have the same kind of power that Brook has, so he’s going to have to treat this fight in the same way he did in his bout with Cotto. In this case, however, Jennings needs to move much more, because he made the mistake of trying to trying to trade shots against Cotto and quickly got taken out.