By Scott Gilfoid: WBA World light heavyweight champion Juergen Braehmer (46-2, 34 KOs) will be making a soft defense of his WBA title on September 5th against German based #13 WBA Konni Konrad (22-1-1, 11 KOs) at the Freiberger Arena, in Dresden, Sachsen, Germany.
For the 36-year-old Braehmer, this is his fifth easy defense of his title since he captured it in 2013 in beating Marcus Oliveira by a 12 round decision. If Braehmer beats the 29-year-old Konrad, which would seem very likely, he’ll be defending his title against another fringe contender in #11 WBC Nathan Cleverly.
Konrad, who was born in Bijelo Polje, Montenegro, hasn’t faced anyone during his 13-year pro career that you can call a good fighter. He was beaten by Denis Inkin by an eight round decision in 2006. In 2014, Konrad was held to a 12 round draw against #15 WBA Mehdi Amar. The fact that Konrad couldn’t even beat this guy kind of tells you all you need to know about him.
Braehmer is running out of soft jobs to fight. He was quite fortunate in his last fight when the World Boxing Association made the bizarre decision to make Robin Krasniqi his No.1 WBA mandatory challenger. They gave Krasniqi a high ranking despite him having been easily beaten by Cleverly in 2013 in a lopsided loss.
Krasniqi had won four fights after that defeat by beating weak opposition. Once Braehmer gets Konrad and Cleverly out of the way, then he’s going to need to start facing the quality fighters at 175 in #3 WBA Andrzej Fonfara and #4 WBA Artur Beterbiev. Cleverly may not get the fight against Braehmer in 2016, because Cleverly will be facing Fonfara in October, and I fully expect Cleverly to get whipped badly by Fonfara.
Even if Cleverly loses, Braehmer will still likely slip in another voluntary defense of his title before having to face a real test against Fonfara or Beterbiev. At that point, I can’t see Braehmer winning against those guys, especially Beterbiev. They hit too hard and will pressure him all night long until they get the stoppage.
Braehmer has beaten these four fighters since picking up the WBA title: Pawel Glazewski, Robin Krasniqi, Enzo Maccarinelli and Roberto Feliciano Bolonti. Out of that bunch, Krasniqi was the WBA mandatory, as I pointed out, and the other guys appear to be all voluntary defenses.
With the rankings that the World Boxing Association has done, it’s enabled Braehmer to take a lot of easy defenses. If the WBA had ranked Fonfara and Beterbiev high to begin with, we likely would have seen Braehmer’s title run end in 2013, shortly after he picked up the WBA strap.
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