Following three consecutive losses to finish his run in Showtime’s Super Six tournament, Arthur Abraham has decided to move back down to middleweight.
Abraham’s last bout in May was a clear defeat to tournament favorite Andre Ward by scores of 108-120, 110-118 and 111-118. Abraham had suffered an embarrassingly lopsided unanimous decision loss to Carl Froch last November, and in March 2010 was disqualified for hitting a downed Andre Dirrell.
“I want to prove I can come back,” Abraham told AFP subsidiary SID. “No one should write me off. Just because I lost recently, it doesn’t mean I have lost my sporting ambitions.”
Abraham’s promoter, Wilfried Sauerland, plans to make the eight pound drop from super-middleweight (168 lbs.) to middleweight (160 lbs.) a gradual one, having his fighter compete two more times at 168 before making the middlewight return.
“It can only work if he works with a nutritional consultant and he strictly adheres to this plan,” Sauerland explained. “He hasn’t done that before.”
Abraham went undefeated during his six-year middlewight campaign from 2003-2009. During that time, Abraham made 10 defenses of the IBF middleweight title with seven coming by way of knockout.
*******************************************************************************
This makes perfect sense for Abraham. Super-middleweight is too deep, and his style has been exposed and exploited at that weight class. The intriguing question is whether fighters Abraham’s size and smaller can replicate that success at 160. It’s entirely possible that Abraham will still struggle heavily with guys like Dmitry Pirog, and definitely the division’s kingpin in Sergio Martinez. I expect Abraham to get in at least 2-3 fights at middleweight against guys on the level of say Peter Manfredo before we see him test himself against a division elite/titlist like Felix Strum.
Beats, Boxing and Mayhem 