FIGHT PREVIEW – ABRAHAM vs FARIAS
By: U.K. Boxing Writer Peter Mann
Photo by Andreas Rentz
Offenburg, Germany on Saturday 14th January will host two relatively big fights when ‘King’ Arthur Abraham (32-3; 26 KO) takes top billing in his first fight since losing in the semi-final of the Super Six Tournament, where he lost to eventual winner Andre Ward. Abraham, residing in Germany but of Armenian descent, will fight an unknown in entity in Pablo ‘Pokémon’ Farias (19-1; 11 KO). The fight is scheduled to be twelve rounds. The undercard on the night will also see a title bout between the WBO Super Middleweight Champion, Robert Stieglitz (40-2; 23 KO) defending against Henry Weber (15-0; 3 KO).
It is a good stage for both the main event and the undercard fight as it will be a 4,000 sell-out, Abraham having a 1,000 plus crowd watch him in a workout last weekend. However, it is the nature of the main event, and particularly the presence of Abraham that perturbs fight fans. Only as recently as 2009 had Abraham made the step up to Super Middleweight but it hasn’t worked to his advantage by any stretch of the imagination. Although he did participate in the Super Six he lost three of his four fights, to Dirrell, Froch and Ward.
This fight, against Farias, is expected to be Abraham’s last at Super Middleweight and will drop down to Middleweight later in the year. It is a level which ‘King Arthur’ dominated between 2005 and 2008, also having a reign as the IBF Middleweight Champion. His only victory since labouring to a win against Jermaine Taylor in October 2009 was against Stjepan Bozic.
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Pokémon’ on the other hand has had a varied career to date, including personally when he found himself being shot twice, once in hand and once in the leg, by an unknown assailant in late March 2011. The 24 year old orthodox boxer, current WBC Latino Super Middleweight Champion, will be looking to put his last fight behind. The only blot on his record came against Jose Alberto Clavero and which saw the Argentine disqualified in the fifth round, hit the deck in the first round, and punished throughout.
Which Abraham will turn up for the fight thought? Will it be the dominating Middleweight boxer of three years ago? Or perhaps the laboured Abraham who has been looking out of his depth at Super Middleweight? And what about Farias? Will he put the shock of defeat against Clavero out of his system with a win?
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