WBA middleweight champion Felix Sturm (28-2-1, 12 KOs) fought to a 12-round draw against American challenger Randy Griffin (24-1-3, 12 KOs) on Saturday night at the Gerry Weber Stadium in Germany. The final judges’ scores were 114-114, 115-114 for Sturm and 117-111 for Griffin. I personally had Griffin winning easily by 8 rounds to four. It wasn’t a close fight and I was being generous by giving Sturm two of the four rounds, because he out-punched in every round of the fight and mostly limited to jabs as his main weapon. Griffin dominated the first two rounds of the fight, attacking Sturm nonstop and hitting him with a massive amount of hooks.
However, each time that Stum landed anything – almost entirely jabs – the German crowd would roar with approval, as if he’d scored a knockdown or something. It had to have had an effect on the judges because Sturm really took a beating in every round and rarely let his hands go at all.