By Sean McDaniel: Former IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (32-3, 26 KO’s) plans on returning to the middleweight division in November after a disastrous showing in the Super Six tournament recently at super middleweight.

Abraham wants to go after WBA Super World middleweight champion Felix Sturm (36-2-1, 15 KO’s) for his next fight in November. Sturm has an open date on November 26th, which he’s been busy trying to fill with a rematch with Britain’s Matthew Macklin. However, negotiations have been going poorly, and a fight against Abraham might be an easier fight to put together. Both Abraham and Sturm are based out of Germany, which would make this an interesting fight for German fans.

In truth, Abraham and Sturm should have fought many years ago when both fighters held middleweight titles. However, their two promotional companies were never able to put a fight together for some reason. With Abraham now in bad shape career-wise, perhaps Sturm will give him a shot. If nothing else, it’s a good filler fight for him until Macklin is ready to come to the bargaining table. It’s not likely that Abraham will beat Sturm because he has problems with boxers, and Sturm has sound boxing skills. Abraham would have a small punchers’ chance but that’s about it. It’s a mismatch on paper.

Abraham, 31, has lost three out of his last four fights and looked poor in his last four bouts. The losses showed in clearly that Abraham isn’t suited for the super middleweight division due to his lack of size, speed and work rate.

Abraham now is going to try and get his weight down so that he can attempt to revive his career at middleweight. How Abraham is going to do that is the big question, because he had to leave the middleweight division in 2009 because he was draining himself trying to make weight.

My views is that Abraham’s time at the top has past him by. He’s 31, and no longer able to compete with the very top fighters in boxing. He never did have great skills and more of a slugger holding a belt when the middleweight division was especially weak. It’s gotten a little bit better, and Abraham has slowed to the point where he’s only capable of fighting hard for 20 to 30 seconds of every round. That’s not enough to beat the young lions in the division. I can’t see him succeeding anymore. He’ll get beat by Sturm and by all of the other middleweight champions. At this point, Abraham will be more of a trial horse and/or gatekeeper. If he’s okay with that, he might be able to make a nice living, but he won’t be the champion he was before.