By Scott Gilfoid: WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (41-4, 28 KOs) put in a workmanlike performance in defeating #5 WBO Paul Smith (35-4, 20 KOs) by a 12 round unanimous decision on Saturday night to retain his WBO title at the Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. The final judges’ scores were 117-111, 117-111 and 118-109.
The 117-111 scores were fair because Smith wasn’t doing enough in each round, and he was getting really nailed by the much stronger Abraham. The fight was one-sided for the most part until the 6th and 7th rounds in which Smith fought well and got the better of Abraham with his body punching and his high work rate.
Abraham came back and dominated the 8th and 9th rounds in landing some heavy right hands. In the 10th, Smith showed new energy in nailing Abraham repeatedly with right hands and left hooks to the body. Abraham controlled the 11th and 12th rounds to cruise to victory.
Smith gave it his best shot, but he just didn’t have the power, defense or the work rate to take the fight even though it was there for the taking if he’d just worked harder and stayed in the pocket. I knew Smith was going to have problems throwing enough punches because he doesn’t have the engine to throw a massive amount of shots.
Smith’s only chance of winning the fight was to follow Carl Froch’s blue print to beat Abraham by throwing constant punches, because he didn’t have the speed or the talent to follow the blueprint that Andre Dirrell and Andre Ward created. That’s why Smith should have focused on throwing 100 punches per round.
Paul was having a hard time coming to terms with his loss after the fight, saying “That’s two times I’ve been on the receiving end of a controversial decision. The game plan was working. I was still getting the body shots in. I believe I won the fight, but the judges felt otherwise. I felt I did enough. I should be the champion.”
Abraham’s promoter Kalle Sauerland made it clear after the fight that the chances of a rematch between Abraham and Smith isn’t in the cards. Sauerland is interested in matching Abraham against the winner of the Felix Sturm vs. Robert Stieglitz. “I thought Arthur Abraham won the fight,” Sauerland said. “He [Abraham] won the fight by 5 or 6 rounds. I thought Paul Smith put in a great fight. I’ll talk to Eddie on Monday. The big one is the winner of the Stieglitz vs. Sturm. The decision was the correct one.”
George Groves said “I thought Abraham just nicked it. Abraham was taking long gaps of time off. He [Smith] lost tonight. I’d like to see how a rematch would pan out.”
***
Other boxing results on the card:
Vincent Feigenbutz KO 3 Guram Natsulishvili
Mateusz Masternak RTD 5 Ben Nsafoah
Matthew Macklin MD 8 Jose Yebes
Enrico Koelling TKO 5 Daniel Regi
Stefan Haertel DQ 4 Leo Tchoula
Fouad El Massoudi pts 6 Arman Torosyan
Comments are closed.