By Matt Stein: World Boxing Association middleweight champion Felix Sturm (33-2-1, 14 KO’s) will be making his first title defense in over a year on Saturday night when he faces number #7 ranked WBA contender Giovanni Lorenzo (29-2, 21 KO’s) at the Lanxess-Arena, Cologne, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. Sturm, 31, hasn’t fought since defending his title in July against Khoren Gevor. What’s surprising is that Sturm hasn’t been stripped of his title with this much off from making a defense.

But in choosing Lorenzo, Sturm won’t have much to worry about unless Sturm has lost his ability completely. Lorenzo has a greatly inflated record and has zero wins over 1st tier fighters during his eight year career. On the two occasions where Lorenzo fought 1st tier fighters, he lost both of the fights to Raul Marquez and Sebastian Syslvester. Speaking of Sylvester, Sturm is interested in fighting a rematch with him for some reason. It’s hard to see why other than the money that Sturm would get for the fight, because he already beat Syslvester two years ago by a lopsided 12 round decision in November 2008.

It was hoped that when Stum got a new promoter that he would start taking on tough fighters in the middleweight division like Kelly Pavlik, Gennady Golovkin, Paul Williams, Sergio Martinez and Dmitry Pirog. However, it looks like Sturm is continuing his trend of taking on lesser threats. At 31, he doesn’t have much time left before he’s going to start fading as a fighter. He may be there already. We’ll find out against Lorenzo. However, we don’t t truly know what Sturm has left until he finally takes on a really good fighter like Golovkin, Williams, Martinez or Pirog. However, that be awhile if Sturm plans on fighting fellow German Sylvester next.

If Sturm waits too long before finally taking on a top quality fighter, he may end up getting destroyed because he might not have enough left by then. I expect Sturm to easily beat Lorenzo this Saturday. Lorenzo fights like he’s muscle-bound, has no hand speed, doesn’t hit that hard and has a robotic style of fighting. It’s pretty amazing that he’s ranked number #7 in the division because he has no wins over 1st tier fighters and has been beaten in the only times he did fight halfway decent 1st tier fighters.

At this point, I see Sturm as being below the aforementioned Pirog, Martinez, Golovkin and Williams in talent. It will be nice once one of them fights him so that we can get a champion that’s interested in making the big fights instead of taking lesser threats during his non-mandatory title defenses.