By Jason Kim: Former IBF middleweight champion (30-0, 24 KO’s) is looking forward to getting started in Showtime’s Super Six tournament which begins on October 17th. Abraham, 29, will be facing former middleweight champion Jermain Taylor on October 17th, in the group I portion of the competition. Abraham, like Taylor, has moved up to the super middleweight division out of necessity because of the burden it had become to make the 160 pound weight limit of the middleweight division.
However, Abraham may find the going a lot tougher than it was in the middleweight division, because 5’10”, Abraham will be the smallest of the super middleweights, at least as far as height goes. In between fights, Abraham walks around at a solid – not fat – 190 pounds. He will likely be fighting close to 180 after draining water weight to make the 168 pound super middleweight limit at the weigh-in. That will likely make Abraham the biggest of the super middleweights in weight.
A lot of boxing experts aren’t giving Taylor much of a chance in the tournament and think he’ll have a lot of problems against most of his opponents starting with his fight against Abraham on October 17th. However, Abraham isn’t selling Taylor short, and sees him as a very dangerous opponent. No doubt Abraham has seen many of Taylor’s fights and knows that he has very fast hands and an excellent jab to go along with it.
Abraham probably won’t be able to match Taylor’s speed, jab or his ability to throw fast combinations. So Abraham is going to have to make his punches count when he does get a chance to land punches. Taylor was knocked out in the 12th round in his last fight against WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch on April 25th, so it’s very likely that Taylor will be looking to avoid exchanges with Abraham and will be looking to use his boxing skills much more than he did against Froch.
Abraham has excellent power, and hopefully his power will carry over to the super middleweight division. He’s going to have to try to find a way to apply steady pressure against Taylor, because Jermain does well when he’s not being pressured. Taylor may have problems from time to time when fighting opponents like Kelly Pavlik and Carl Froch, because they made him fight hard for the full three minutes of every round, but against fighters with a slower pace, Taylor does extremely well against them.
Abraham, unfortunately for him, isn’t much of a pressure fighter and tends to throw periodic flurries. Unless Abraham can catch Taylor with a big shot during one of those flurries, Abraham may have problems winning rounds.
Taylor will stay busy, and if nothing else, will be using his jab in every round to pile up points. If Abraham can’t beat Taylor, then his chances of winning the tournament drop dramatically from there. The other Super Six fighters – Froch, Mikkel Kessler, Andre Dirrell and Andre Ward – are even more dangerous than Taylor and better in terms of stamina and chin than him.
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