By Scott Gilfoid: Having barely won his last fight against Daniel Geale last August by a 12 round split decision, IBF middleweight champion Darren Barker (26-1, 16 KO’s) expects to win handily in his first title defense against Felix Sturm (38-3-2, 17 KO’s) at the Porsche Arena, in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
Barker, 31, will be the visiting fighter and he’ll be at a huge disadvantage if the fight does to the cards. He’s got to hope that he can get the strong-chinned Sturm out of there, because his chances of winning a decision are slim at best.
Barker can thank his promoter Eddie Hearn for that, because he was the one that set it up to defend his title against the German based Sturm in Germany. Barker will be making more money for having agreed to this, but he may be sad afterwards if he loses a controversial decision.
Barker said to Sky Sports “I have worked so hard to win the title and there’s no way I’m letting it go now…I’m very confident I’ll retain my title and do so in style…I truly believe I’ve got his number.”
It doesn’t matter if Barker has Sturm’s number or not. If he can’t knock the guy out, there’s a chance that he’ll get jobbed in this fight. I don’t know if Barker can fight much better than he did in the Geale fight, but he’s going to have to in order to get Sturm out of there. He barely beat Geale, and there’s a lot of people who think that Barker should have lost to the Australian.
The thing is Geale barely beat Sturm last year in winning by a 12 round split decision in September 2012. That fight could have gone either way. So if Geale couldn’t even conclusively show that he was the better fighter than Sturm, how is it that Barker is going to be able to go in and dominate Sturm? We could see them fighting a really close fight and if it’s close then guess who wins? It’ll be Sturm all the way.
This is how this fight is likely going to play out. Sturm will dominate the action from the outside with his jab, and keep Barker on the outside. Barker will land some big shots every now and then to win rounds, but Sturm’s jabs and air tight defense will make it difficult for Barker to prove that he’s the better guy.
The fight will end up being a subjective one where the judges have to pick between Sturm’s jabs and Barker’s power punches. I see Sturm getting the nod in this fight because he’ll be the home guy and will have the German crowd on his side cheering every punch he throws.
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