By Scott Gilfoid: Former IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham’s days of destroying over-matched sub par middleweight division are long over. Now, Abraham is laboring at the super middleweight division and doing a poor job of it against the better athletes and the more talented opposition. Thus far, Abraham has lost two of his three fights in the division and didn’t look all that great in the one fight he did win against Jermain Taylor. With embarrassing losses to Andre Dirrell and Carl Froch now behind him, Abraham is now limping into his semifinal bout against number #1 seed Andre Ward (23-0, 13 KO’s) in his next Super Six tournament fight.

Abraham says that he made “mistakes” in his loss to Froch recently and says he’s going to fix those mistakes. Presumably, you would have to assume that translates to Abraham being more aggressive by coming forward all the time and will be willing to take shots in order to land his own big punches. I can’t see that happening for a couple of reasons: 1. Abraham doesn’t like to get hit. The guy seems adverse to getting tagged in the head and body, and because of that he seems reluctant to mix it up in any major way. 2. Abraham has poor stamina and seems to pace himself so that he doesn’t run out of gas and get knocked out.

I can’t see him pushing himself against a talented fighter like Ward at the risk of being humiliated and/or running out of gas. Ward will over the slow moving, slow punching Abraham all night long, believe me. He’s going to put a hurting on Abraham in the worst way. So unless Abraham is willing to risk everything, and I mean everything, he’s going to have to walk through a hail of fire to try and land his shots against Ward. I see this ending badly for Abraham with him getting totally humiliated and then stopped.