By Eric Thomas: Former IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham’s career looked to be dead in the water after he suffered three defeats in the Super Six tournament against Andre Dirrell, Carl Froch and Andre Ward.

However, now that the tournament is over, Abraham has picked up two easy wins over weak opposition and he’s been pushed to the #1 spot by the WBO in their rankings and will be facing WBO super middleweight champion Robert Stieglitz (42-2, 23 KO’s) on August 25th at the O2 World Arena in Berlin, Germany.

This is really the only shot that the 32-year-old Abraham has at winning a world title at 168, because he was already easily beaten by the other super middleweight champions Andre Ward and Carl Froch. The fights were so one-sided that there’s no point in Abraham even wasting his time in fighting them, because he would only lose again badly. But Stieglitz has been considered the weak link among the super middleweight champions ever since he captured the WBO title against Karoly Balzsay in 2009.

The best super middleweights haven’t bothered facing the German based Stieglitz because there’s no upside to facing him because he’s unknown in the United States and to fight him you’d have to travel to Germany and take your chances fighting over there. Stieglitz, who is a limited fighter, has held down the WBO title through six title defenses against beatable opposition.

Abraham will be a huge step up in class for Stieglitz, and we may see Stieglitz taken out again like he was in his loss to Librado Andrade in 2008. Stieglitz has problems with pressure fighters like Abraham, and it’s going to be tough on him because he doesn’t have a good set of wheels nor does he have any kind of power. If you stand in front of Abraham for 12 rounds, you’ve got to have a great chin, great defensive skills or long arms to keep him on the outside the way that Dirrell, Ward and Froch did.