>By Scott Gilfoid: It’s sad to see Arthur Abraham’s promoter Wilfried Sauerland saying that they’ll be postponing Abraham’s flight over to the U.S for his Super Six semifinal bout against unbeaten WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward (23-0, 13 KO’s) for their fight at the Home Depot Center, in Carson, California. Sauerland is considered about one of the judges coming from the same state as Ward and wants to have the California Athletic Commission do something about this.

Sauerland says that there was an existing agreement about the officials being neutral. However, he doesn’t say anything about whether it was a verbal agreement or something on paper. Presumably if he had it in writing, this would be a done deal but if it was a verbal agreement then he may not have much luck in changing who works the fight. But lets be serious about this: Abraham has next to no chance of winning this fight no matter who works the bout.

I would venture to guess that you could have the entire crew be Germans or Armenians and Abraham would still lose the fight because it won’t be a competitive one. Abraham doesn’t have the boxing skills or the talent to beat a fighter like Ward. It’s basically going to boil down to whether or not Abraham can knock Ward out. If he can do that, it doesn’t matter who the official is working the fight. If Abraham can’t get the knockout, he’s going to lose because he doesn’t have the workrate, the hand speed, the stamina nor the boxing ability to beat a fighter like Ward. Abraham was painfully exposed by the talented Andre Dirrell and then further exposed by Carl Froch.

Abraham was easily out-boxed in both fights. I can see how having the Abraham-Ward fight postponed or perhaps permanently cancelled would be a benefit to Abraham. At least he wouldn’t have to suffer another embarrassing loss and then could go back to fighting little known middleweight contenders like he did while holding down the IBF middleweight crown from 2005 to 2009.

Abraham’s time as a champion was filled defending his paper title against less than stellar opposition, such as Wayne Elcock, Edison Miranda, Raul Marquez, Lajuan Simon, Mahir Oral, Sebastien Demers, Khoren Gevor, Shannan Taylor and Kofi Jantuah. Abraham fought soft opposition his entire time as a middleweight champion. If Abraham can avoid a loss to Ward by cancelling the fight, Abraham can then move back down and possibly pick up a paper title and resume facing those kinds of fighters one after another instead of more challenging fights against the likes of Sergio Martinez, Kelly Pavlik, and Gennady Golovkin.