By Jim Dower: World Boxing Association middleweight champion Felix Sturm (33-2-1, 14 KO’s) will now be facing middleweight contender Giovanni Lorenzo (29-2, 21 KO’s) instead of Ricardo Mayorga on September 4th at the Lanxess-Arena, Cologne, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. In some ways, this is a better opponent than Mayorga, because at least the 29-year-old Lorenzo is ranked at number #4 by the IBF. Oddly enough, Lorenzo isn’t ranked in the top 15 by the WBA, which makes me wonder why he was selected for Sturm. Perhaps a much better choice for Sturm would be number #2 ranked WBA middleweight contenders Gennady Golovkin or #3 ranked contenders Hassan N’Dam N’Jikam.

Even number #1 ranked contender Anthony Mundine would be a better option than Lorenzo, although I don’t quite agree with Mundine being ranked at number #1 because he hasn’t fought anyone worth noting in quite some time.

Sturm hasn’t fought in over a year since beating Khoren Gevor last year in July. Sturm has been busy in dealing with promotional issues but now is finally clear of that problem and is ready to fight again.

Lorenzo has an impressive record, to be sure. However, most of his wins have come against obscure B level fighters. Of the two times where Lorenzo stepped it up and fought an A level fighter, he was beaten by both Sebastian Sylvester and Raul Marquez. Due to his lack of experience against top level opposition, you really don’t know what to expect of Lorenzo for this fight. It’s not a good sign that Lorenzo was beaten by Sylvester, a fighter that Sturm easily beat by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision two years ago. Just by that fight alone, it’s probably fair to say that Sturm is going to easily beat Lorenzo on September 4th by a 12 round decision.

Sturm, 31, needs to start going after bigger names in the middleweight division. His career has been unremarkable to the extreme. Despite holding down then WBA middleweight title off and on for the past four years, Sturm has nothing to show for it in terms of big money fights. Sturm considered by many boxing fans to be a paper champion, and that’s because he hasn’t anyone yet. Most of his opponents have been from Europe. Sturm could really help himself if he was to go after fights with Kelly Pavlik, Daniel Jacobs, Sergio Martinez and Miguel Cotto. Those are the fights that Sturm needs to go after so that he can make more of a name for himself and get better paydays.