Former two time WBO super middleweight champion Robert Stieglitz (47-4, 27 KOs) will be facing former IBF/WBA middleweight champion Felix Sturm (39-4-2, 18 KOs) on November 8th in a WBO super middleweight title eliminator bout at the Porsche Arena, Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
The winner of the Stiegltiz-Sturm fight will become the WBO mandatory challenger for WBO 168lb champion Arthur Abraham. For the #1 WBO Stieglitz this potentially gives him a chance to fight Abraham for the 4th time in just 3 years.
It’s difficult to imagine that Abraham and Stieglitz have been able to fight each other so often without other fighters getting in the way, but with the way the World Boxing Organization has been ranking them, it’s made it easy for them to go back and forth this way. For example, Stieglitz was beaten last March by a 12 round split decision in a fight where he lost his WBO title. Instead of Stieglitz having to fight a dangerous super middleweight like James DeGale or George Groves, he simply defeated 39-year-old Sergey Khomitsky.
Now all Stieglitz needs to do is fight Sturm to get locked in for another title shot against Abraham. Sturm is a middleweight and isn’t ranked in the top 15 in the super middleweight division. This means that the other top 15 contenders the WBO has ranked are getting passed over in favor of Sturm.
Abraham has an easy title defense coming up this month against #5 WBO Paul Smith on September 27th, so there’s little chance that Abraham will lose that fight. Abraham has already defended his WBO title once in beating fringe contender Nikola Sjekloca by a 12 round unanimous decision last May in a voluntary title defense. The Smith fight will be Abraham’s second voluntary defense before he faces the winner of the Sturm-Stieglitz fight.
It would be nice to see some other guys get a chance to fight Abraham and Stieglitz besides the less than dangerous fighters they’ve been taking on when not facing each other.
