By Jason Kim: Arthur Abraham made a big step back in contention by defeating Piotr Wilczewski (30-3, 10 KO’s) by a 12 round unanimous decision on Saturday night to earn a shot against the winner of the WBO super middleweight fight between Robert Stieglitz and George Groves.
The Abraham-Wilczewski took place at the Sparkassen-Arena, Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, and it was a big crowd of fans that came to see whether the 32-year-old Abraham still had it. He showed that he’s still good enough to beat a fighter of Wilczewski by earning a 12 round decision by the scores of 118-109, 118-109, 119-108. The bout was without draw, as neither fighter was knocked down.
However, Abraham did hurt Wilczewski with a storm of shots near the end of the 11th round where Abraham basically emptied out his entire gas tank trying to get the stoppage. Wilczewski, although hurt, was able to weather the storm by holding until the bell sounded to end the round. The effort that it took to go for the knockout left Abraham with nothing left in the 12th round, and Wilczewski appeared to win that round.
Abraham had a big power advantage and a much better jab. He used these tools to control the action in most of the first half of the fight, playing possum by covering up in his turtle shell defense for the major portions of every round and then coming alive in wild bursts of energy to try and catch Wilczewski off guard and steal the round. It worked because Wilczewski was too slow and too weak to take advantage when Abraham was just covering up. Instead opening up on Abraham the way that Carl Froch, Andre Dirrell and Andre Ward had done in their wins over Abraham, Wilczewski mostly tapped away at Abraham with pawing jabs and weak shots to the body and to the gloves. He just looked he didn’t know how to go about attacking Abraham and did a poor job of keeping the punches flowing.
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Gutknecht defeats Averlant
EBU light heavyweight champion Eduard Gutknecht (24-1, 9 KO’s) labored to a 12 round split decision victory over French challenger Tony Averlant (17-6-2, 4 KO’s). The final judges’ scores were 115-113 and 114-113 for Gutknecht, and 115-113 for Averlant. Gutknecht, #3 WBC, #5 WBO, #11 IBF, fought well in the first half of the fight, knocking Averlant down in the 1st round late with a big left hook to the head. However, after controlling most of the first half of the fight, Gutknecht faded badly second half of the fight and took a lot of punishment from the light hitting Averlant.
Gutknecht was still the harfer puncher of the two, but he wasn’t throwing many punches in the later part of the fight and was doing a lot of holding. Gutknecht was also grinding his head into Averlant a lot and it’s surprising that referee allowed Gutknecht to do this. It’s hard to say what he was hoping to accomplish by doing this but it made him look desperate to try and get any edge he could in the fight.
Whenever Averlant would take a deep breath or take fraction of a second to do things like look to the referee, Gutknecht would pounce on him to try and take advantage. But he couldn’t do much otherwise because he was too weak, tired and couldn’t match Averlant’s high work rate and excellent jab.
What was surprising was how much bigger the 6-foot Averlant was compared to the 5’11 1/2″ Gutknecht. Although both fighters were technically the same size in listed height, Averlant looked at least two inches taller with a lot longer arms. This allowed him to control the action from the outside for much of the fight.
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Masternak stops Romero
Undefeated cruiserweight contender Mateusz Masternak (26-0, 20 KO’s) kept his unbeaten record intact with a 10th round TKO victory over Felipe Romero (15-5-1, 10 KO’s). Masternak, #7 WBO, #9 WBA, #9 WBC, #10 IBF, was ahead every step of the way and hurt Romero in the 10th, causing the referee to step in before Masternak could finish him off.
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Weber decisions Di Giacomo
German crowd favorite super middleweight Henry Weber (16-1-1, 3 KO’s) defeated Lorenzo Di Giacomo (41-6-1, 19 KO’s) by an eight round unanimous decision. The final judges’ scores were 77-75, 77-75 and 78-75.
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In other action:
Tyron Zeuge TKO 1 Yauheni Bohdanouski
Robert Woge KO 3 Carl Dilks