By Jason Kim: Former IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (33-3, 27 KO’s) needs a win over former EBU super middleweight champion Piotr Wilczewski (30-1, 10 KO’s) to keep alive his hopes of taking on WBO super middleweight champion Robert Stieglitz in 2012. The Stieglitz fight is there for Abraham, but he’s got to beat Wilczewski on March 31st at the Sparkassen-Arena, Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.

Wilczewski, 33, is beatable against really good fighters with a combination of power and boxing skill. However, against a limited slugger like Abraham, this could be a very tough fight for Abraham to win because Wilczewski has excellent boxing skills and does well against fighters that only can punch.

Abraham has lost three out of his last five fights since October 2010, and while he was his last fight against someone named Pablo Oscar Natalio Farias, it wasn’t a serious opponent that told you anything about where Abraham is at. He showed no improvement in his game from his losses to Andre Dirrell, Carl Froch and Andre Ward in the Super Six tournament.

Abraham was still throwing the wide shots and just looking to slug. At this point in his career, this is probably all he can do, but he seems to be making a huge mistake by persisting in staying at super middleweight rather than trying to move back down to 160 where he was a much more dangerous fighter.

Unless Abraham is able to get Wilczewski out of there at some point this could end up being a very tough fight for Abraham and it could come down to him possibly winning a controversial hometown decision, because Wilczewski has the better skills. He may not be on the same level as Abraham in terms of big time power, but he hits hard enough to get your attention, as we saw in his controversial loss to James DeGale last year. Wilczewski was the harder hitter of the two int he fight and really beat DeGale up but wasn’t given the decision.