Felix Sturm (40-5-3, 18 KOs) did just enough to win a 12 round majority decision over WBA Super World super middleweight champion Fedor Chudinov (14-1, 10 KOs) on Saturday night at the Koenig Pilsener Arena in Oberhausen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. The fight result was highly controversial though, because many boxing fans felt that the 28-year-old Chudinov had done enough to keep retain his WBA title. The judges saw it differently, however.
The judges scored it for Sturm by the scores of 114-114, 115-113, and 115-113. The judges might have liked Sturm’s more explosive punches and his better hand speed. That’s really the only reason why the judges could given the fight to Sturm, because he was outworked in 9 of the 12 rounds. Chudinov was constantly nailing Sturm with head and body shots and doing the far better work. Sturm started out well in the first two rounds, and then finished the fight well in the 12th. In between, Chudinov got the better of Sturm in rounds 3 through 11.
Sturm was cut over his right eye in the 10th from a clash of heads. He also suffered some kind of jaw injury it appears around the same time to the left side of his jaw.
This wasn’t the Sturm that many boxing fans had remembered from years ago. He came into the fight not having won since 2013, and he never seemed capable of fighting hard for more than 30 seconds in each round. It was Chudinov that was virtually all the work in the round. Sturm could fight in brief spurts and spend the rest of the time just covering up and taking shots. The judges obviously liked the shots that Sturm did land because they were willing to ignore the constant work that Chudinov was doing.
With the win, Sturm will now very likely wait the outcome of the Arthur Abraham vs. Gilberto Ramirez fight on April 9, and look to fight Abraham if he wins. Abraham holds the WBO super middleweight title and he lives in Germany. A fight between Abraham and Sturm would be a big money maker in Germany. It’s a fight that probably means little to fans from outside of Germany, because there arguably better fighters in the division than these guys. We saw that tonight with the better fighter losing by way of the controversial scores handed down from the three judges Jean-Louis Legland, Giuseppe Quartarone, and Ignacio Robles.
This has got to be disappointing for Chudinov. He came all the way from Russia and fought his heart out only to find himself on the receiving end of a controversial decision.
