By Scott Gilfoid: Former WBA World middleweight champion Felix Sturm (38-3-2, 17 KO’s) battles a cocky and some might say an overconfident IBF middleweight champion Darren Barker (26-1, 16 KO’s) this Saturday night at the Porsche Arena, Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
Barker feels that there is no way on earth that he’ll lose to Sturm, but it’s hard see where Barker’s confidence is coming from because he’s not looked good when facing quality opposition such as Sergio Martinez and Daniel Geale. Barker does look good when facing the lesser fighters, which accounts for pretty much all of his previous fights when you exclude his battles with Martinez and Geale.
Barker said “There is zero chance I will lose this fight. I know what I have to do to beat Felix. I want a long and active reign as champion.”
Barker’s promoter Eddie Hearn has talked about wanting to match him against UK fighters like Andy Lee, Matthew Macklin and Martin Murray if he gets past Sturm, so I think there’s a decent chance that Barker might hold onto his IBF title for a while. The International Boxing Federation’s rankings are pretty poor as far as the guys that they have ranked in their top 15.
Once Sturm, Lee, Macklin and Martin are out of the way, Barker is looking at top 15 contenders like this to dine on for what would likely be easy title defenses: Sam Soliman, Domenico Spada, Gilberto Ramirez, Patrick Nielsen, Jose Miguel Torres [who was knocked out last Saturday by David Lemieux], Predrag Radosevic, Billy Joe Saunders, Maksim Bursak, Caleb Truax, Lemieux, Brian Vera and Daniel Jacobs. Out of that entire bunch, I only see Jacobs as being someone with decent talent and capable of beating Barker. The rest of them I just see as flawed and more 2nd tier fighters than anything.
The 31-year-old Barker is coming off a close and somewhat controversial 12 round split decision victory over former IBF 160 lb. title holder Daniel Geale from last August in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Barker barely won that fight and perhaps the only reason he did was because Geale didn’t press the action by throwing shots after knocking Barker down in the 6th round.
Sturm, 34, has definitely slipped a couple of notches in the past 2 years. He’s not the same fighter he was from 2007-2010 when he dominating the largely weak opposition that the WBA had ranked in their top 15. The middleweight division was incredibly weak after Bernard Hopkins moved up in weight, leaving guys like Sturm, Kelly Pavlik and Arthur Abraham as champions. However, Sturm was definitely better three years ago than he is now as a fighter, and that leaves some questions about whether he has enough in the tank to whip Barker. I think Sturm’s jab and power is definitely good enough for him to beat Barker by a decision or even by knockout. But Sturm’s workrate has dropped in the last few years, and the only thing you can count on from his is a steady powerful jab. He gets tired if he throws more than a handful of punches per round, and if that happens against Barker then he’ll lose.
If Sturm goes to Barker’s body on Saturday night then he’ll knock him out. Barker can’t handle body shots for some reason, and he’s there for the taking if Sturm is smart enough to focus all his energies to attacking Barker to the body.
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