By Jeff Aranow: Former two division world champion Arthur Abraham (45-5, 30 KOs) and former 29-year-old former two time world title challenger Robin Krasniqi (46-4, 17 KOs) have a purse bid scheduled on January 4 for a WBO super middleweight title eliminator fight to determine a No.1 mandatory challenger to WBO 168lb champion Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez for 2017, says Fight News. Abraham is ranked #2 by the World Boxing Organization, and Krasniqi is rated #3.
The location of the purse bid will be in Budapest, Hungary on Jan.4.
Abraham, 36, lost his WBO World super middleweight title to Gilbero Ramirez earlier this year in April in losing by a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores 120-108, 120-108 and 120-108. Abraham lost every round of the fight, as Ramirez used the ring to box circles around the slower, shorter 5’9” Abraham. Whatever chance Abraham had of winning that fight went out the window when he decided he didn’t want to attack Ramirez hard enough for him to get the win.
Later in the fight, Abraham put some pressure on Ramirez and looked good each time he would do that. Ultimately, Abraham wasn’t willing to put enough pressure on Ramirez to give himself a decent chance of winning the fight. A rematch between the 6’2 ½” Ramirez and Abraham very likely will play out the same way with the Mexican fighter using the ring to keep the shorter Abraham on the outside, and essentially helpless. Ramirez is capable of fighting in the inside against Abraham if push comes to shove, but it’ll be up to Abraham to put enough pressure to make it an inside fight.
Krasniqi hasn’t done a lot for him to be rated No.3 with the WBO. Krasniqi lost to former WBA World light heavyweight champion Juerge Braehmer by a 9th round stoppage defeat in March 2015. Braehmer dominated the fight and was ahead on the scorecards by the scores 88-82, 87-83 and 87-83. Krasniqi bounced back from the loss to beat Vaclav Polak, Cagn Ermis and Juergen Doberstein in his last three fights.
Krasniqi also lost to former WBO World light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision in April 2013. Krasniqi has since won seven out of his last eight fights. However, Krasniqi hasn’t beaten anyone of note during that time. His opposition has largely been fighters out of the spotlight.
The WBO has been a sanctioning body that has given Krasniqi very good rankings with their organization in the last four years. He still hasn’t beaten anyone of note, but the WBO been good to him. It’s up to Krasniqi to prove that he’s a talented enough fighter to take advantage of all the chances the WBO keeps giving him, because the well will run dry eventually if he doesn’t capitalize on these chances he’s being given.
Abraham is seen as a fighter that is over-the-hill in the view of a lot of the boxing fans. Abraham’s ring record in the last three years might not reflect that the way he’s performed inside the ring in his last three fights sure seems to indicate that. In additional to Abraham’s loss to Gilberto Ramirez last April, he also struggled to beat his last opponent Tim Robin Lihaug last July by an 8th round TKO, and he also had major problems beating Martin Murray by a 12 round split decision in November 2015.
The WBO has been good to Abraham as well with him and Robert Stieglitz fighting 4 times in the span of three years with the WBO 168lb title on the line each time. You don’t see that too often two fighters facing each other four times in three years. Abraham and Stieglitz probably wouldn’t have fought all those times if not for the WBO in ranking them both during those years.
Now that Abraham is no longer the WBO champion, he’s looking to fight Ramirez again. It’s going to be interesting to see how many times Abraham and Ramirez wind up facing each other. If the WBO is going to keep Abraham a high ranking despite him losing, then he could very well fight Ramirez three or four times as well.
Abraham can still punch with a great deal of power. There’s nothing wrong with Abraham’s power. Where he’s lost something in his game is his stamina and combination punching. Abraham doesn’t attack his opponents and throw a lot of punches any longer. He used to be capable of turning on his offense for brief spurts during each round. Abraham is now mainly left with charging his opponents in the last seconds of each round to try steal them. It works sometimes like in his fight against Lihaug, but then it fails other times like against Ramirez, Andre Dirrell, Andre Ward and Carl Froch.
Some boxing fans want to see new blood with the WBO in terms of them ranking some younger fighters higher that haven’t gotten a chance to ever fight for a world title. It’s all well and good that the WBO has given Abraham a high ranking with them after his loss to Ramirez, but there are other young fighters that deserve to fight in a WBO eliminator bout just as much as Abraham if not more. You’ve got guys like #1 Jesse Hart, #4 George Groves,# 5 Zac Dunn, #6 Isaac Expo, #7 Callum Smith, #8 Trevor McCumby, and #9 Matt Karobov. Those are all fighters that should be getting world title shots.
If Abraham loses the fight to Krasniqi, he should think about retiring from boxing. Krasniqi isn’t a major player in the 168lb division. If Abraham doesn’t have the skills or the youth to beat him, then it’s probably all over for him as a viable contender.