Sturm vs. Macklin moved to 6/25 to avoid being on same date as Klitschko-Haye

By Boxing News - 04/21/2011 - Comments

By Sean McDaniel: The title fight between WBA Super World middleweight champion Felix Sturm (35-2-1, 15 KO’s) and challenger Matthew Macklin (28-2, 19 KO’s) has been moved to June 25th in order to avoid competing with the mega fight between IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko and WBA champion David Haye on July 2nd. It wouldn’t be competition. The Stum-Macklin fight is only mildly interesting, as Sturm has picked yet another unproven contender to fight instead of someone dangerous like Gennady Golvokin. The Stum vs. Macklin fight will be taking place at the Lanxess-Arena, Cologne, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany.

Macklin, 28, has captured the British and EBU middleweight titles in the past, and is now fighting for the first title for a world title. He’s beaten mostly Euro and domestic level up until now and it’s unclear how well he’ll do in stepping up against Sturm. In Macklin’s last four bouts, he’s beaten Amin Asikainen, Rafael Sosa Pintos, Shalva Jomardashvili and Ruben Varon. Macklin looked horrible in the Varon fight recently last December, and barely won it. He’s going into the June 25th fight on that bad performance and that’s not good.

Sturm looked equally bad in beating a hand-picked Ronald Hearns by a 7th round TKO win in February. Hearns was picked from near the bottom of the WBA pile and still gave Sturm all he could handle for six rounds. Sturm has a tendency to go the easy route when picking out optional defenses during his career, and so it’s not surprising that Hearns was picked out.

Macklin will likely lose this fight. Sturm has a good jab and that’s probably all he’ll need. You have to have really good power to beat Sturm, because he’s hard to beat while fighting in Germany. Indeed, Sturm has never lost by decision while fighting in Germany.



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