Arthur Abraham vs. Tim Robin Lihaug results

By Boxing News - 07/16/2016 - Comments

By Jim Dower: Former two-division world champion Arthur Abraham (45-5, 30 KOs) overcame a slow start to come on and defeat #15 WBO Tim Robin Lihaug (15-2, 8 KOs) by an 8th round knockout in super middleweight action on Saturday night at the Max Schmeling Halle, Prenzlauer Berg, in Berlin, Germany. With the victory, Abraham captured the vacant WBO International super middleweight title.

The 36-year-old Abraham knocked a very tired looking Lihaug down with a hard left-right combination in round eight. Abraham then unloaded on Lihaug with some powerful shots until his corner threw in the towel to have the fight stopped. The official of the stoppage by referee Mikael Hook was 1:09 of round eight.

Things didn’t look good for Abraham in the first four rounds, as the taller 6’1″ Lihaug used his considerable height and reach to dominate the shorter 5’9″ Abraham from the outside. However, Lihaug began to look weary in the 5th round, and this enabled Abraham to take control over the fight. Without Lihaug fading in the fight, we likely would have seen Abraham out-boxed once again. Abraham doesn’t have the size to beat the bigger and more talented super middleweights in the division. Nothing has changed with Abraham’s built in limitations in this division ever since he was beaten over and over again in the Super Six tournament five years ago. Abraham was isolated with the WBO belt for two years and didn’t have to face a talented contender due to the WBO’s poor rankings. It wasn’t until the WBO finally ranked a good contender in Gilberto Ramirez that Abraham’s reign as the WBO champion ended. It’s likely that Abraham would have never won the WBO title in the first place if he had to fight a good contender like Callum Smith, Badou Jack, James DeGale or George Groves.

You can argue that the only reason Abraham had success in the 168lb division from 2012 to 2015 was due to careful match-making with Abraham winning the WBO title off arguably the weakest of the super middleweight champions at the time against Robert Stieglitz in 2014. The two German based fighters than took turns fighting each other back and forth for the next two years in fighting four times with one another.

Abraham has options available to him now to challenge for the WBA super middleweight title against the winner of tonight’s fight between WBA champion Giovanni De Carolis and Tyron Zeuge.

For #6 WBO Abraham, it was a must needed win, as he was beaten by Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez by a one-sided 12 round decision in his last fight in April of this year. That loss saw Abraham lose his WBO super middleweight title.

Other boxing results on the card:

Ramona Kuehne RTD 5 Ikram Kerwat
Sebastian Formella UD 8 Nico Salzmann
Stefan Haertel UD 8 Mateo Damian Veron
Alexander Peil KO 4 Igor Pylypenko
Charlie Edwards UD 6 Jose Aguilar
Freddy Kiwitt KO 2 Igor Faniyan
Burak Sahin UD 8 Jakov Gospic
Anthony Ogogo TKO 2 Bronislav Kubin