By Scott Gilfoid: Former International Boxing Federation (IBF) middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (31-2, 25 KO’s) will try to regain some of his shattered confidence when he takes on Stjepan Bozic (24-4, 15 KO’s) next week on February 12th in a 10 round scheduled bout at the RWE Rhein-Huhr Sporthalle, Muelheim, Nordhein-Westfalen, Germany. Abraham, 30, has had a lot of his confidence driven out of him with two consecutive losses in the Super Six tournament first to the talented Andre Dirrell and most recently against WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch.

Abraham now if looking at facing WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward in his semifinal bout in the Super Six tournament following the tune-up bout against the little known 36-year-old Bozic. It’s hard to say how much confidence that Abraham will get from beating up on Bozic, because the differences between him and Ward are fairly dramatic. It’s like apples and oranges. Beating Bozic will count for nothing and can’t give Abraham much of a confidence boost because he’s so inferior to Ward in talent that it’s not even funny.

In fairness to Abraham, it probably wasn’t his bright idea to take the tune-up fight with Bozic. But whatever the case, this fight won’t help Abraham much in getting him ready for Ward. Even if Abraham was incredibly confident for the Ward fight, he still would be in way over his head in that fight. What Abraham is missing is work rate, hand speed, foot movement and basic talent. These are things that you either have or you don’t. Abraham can fight a 100 tune-up fights against Bozic, but he still won’t have the talent to beat Ward. We’re talking different levels here.