By Jim Dower: In what could be a very good fight, WBA World middleweight champion Felix Sturm (36-2-2, 15 KO’d) fights challenger Sebastian Zbik (30-1, 10 KO’s) tomorrow night at the Lanxess Arnea in Cologne, Germany. This is one of the best fighters that the 33-year-old Sturm has faced thus far, and it’s going to be a real struggle for Sturm to retain his title in this bout.

Depending on how you look at it, Sturm is either starting to lose some of skills or the opposition is getting better in the middleweight division. I personally think it’s a bit of both. Sturm is definitely showing signs of slowing down. You got a pretty good idea that something is a miss with Sturm when he took punishment in beating Ronald Hearns last year in February. Sturm got the win but he took a lot of head shots in the fight and looked like he’d been stung by a swarm of bees after the fight.

Sturm has had a couple of tough fights in his last two bouts against Matthew Macklin and Martin Murray. Sturm retained his title but was held to a 12 round draw against Murray. There wasn’t a rematch, although Murray badly wanted one.

Zbik doesn’t care for Sturm very much and doesn’t see him as the Super World middleweight champion. He thinks he’s vulnerable and has been ducking his mandatory challenger.

This fight will come down to whether Zbik can wear down Sturm with his pressure and power shots. Sturm can punch, but he won’t be as active as Zbik. Fighters that let Sturm dictate the pace of the fight on the outside end up losing badly. To beat Sturm you have to come at him at and put him under pressure the way that Javier Castillejo did when he defeated Sturm by a 10th round TKO in July 2006. Castillejo crowded Sturm and hammered him with uppercuts in close.

Sturm, not having much of an inside game, covered up and tried to punch with Castillejo but ended up getting taken out with a series of uppercuts. Castillejo had an advantage that Zbik doesn’t and that’s his much better inside skills. Zbik doesn’t fight on the inside as far as I know, and he’s not even close to being as good a pressure fighter as Castillejo was in his prime. That’s not to say that he can’t learn to be one by tonight, but it’s going to be a tough ask for Zbik to be what he’s never been in the past.