Juergen Braehmer is the new European Light Heavyweight Champion. After twelve exciting rounds, the 34-year-old won an unanimous decision over previous titlist Eduard Gutknecht in Berlin on Saturday night.
“It was a very tough fight against Eddy. I did manage to take advantage of most of my strengths, but it was difficult for me to keep focus for the whole duration of the fight,” said the prodigy of coach Karsten Roewer after the championship bout at the Max-Schmeling-Halle.
Right at the beginning, the former titleholder Gutknecht was keen to put his stamp onto the fight and went straight into attack mode. The 30-year-old caught Braehmer on the head, who seemed a bit overrun by this ferocious start. However, this was not going to be the only unwanted surprise for the man from northern Germany. Gutknecht tried everything he could which resulted in him not only showing an aggressive approach with his fists but also using some unclean methods by pushing his opponent to the ground.
Nevertheless, Braehmer was not impressed and went for it. The two opponents exchanged some vicious shots both taking as well as throwing hard punches. After a while, Braehmer managed to get the required distance between him and his opponent. Especially his straight left hand was causing some serious problems for Gutknecht, which did not only impress his foe but also the judges.
In round nine, the prodigy of coach Ulli Wegner was his own worst enemy. After pushing Braehmer to the ground once again, referee Terry O’Connor deducted a point. From that moment onwards, the orthodox fighter knew that he could only turn things around in one way.
“I can’t complain, I should have knocked him out. I had the chance to. In the end I was too focused on the harder punches and forgot about the easy ones,” said Gutknecht.
However, an early ending was not meant to be and the judges had to declare a winner. All of them were in favor of Braehmer and scored the fight 114:113, 116:111 and 117:110.
However, there were not any losers on the night – at least that was the opinion of the new European Champion: “I haven’t seen such an exciting fight in Germany for years. I believe that everybody left as a winner today.”
In the second main event of the evening, Robert Woge won the vacant IBF Intercontinental Light Heavyweight Title against Hakim Zoulikha. The 28-year-old once again proved that he is the man for exciting battles. In a fight that mainly consisted of trades of one big blow after another, both boxers were bruised from an early stage. Every time Woge got caught, he replied immediately with a counter punch and the same has to be said about his opponent Zoulikha.
In round eleven the German landed a vicious left hook right on the head of the man from France whose knees caved in. He did manage to get back up again but as soon as Woge went back on the attack, Zoulikha took a knee and the referee stopped the bout after two Minutes and 25 Seconds.
As in September, I once again ran out of gas in the 10th & 11th championship rounds of October & November with this column, but I recovered to complete them and will unleash a few more flurries to close out the 12th and final round.
In the first week of October, Hassan N’Dam won a UD over Curtis Stevens in an eliminator for the right to challenge Jermaine Taylor who defeated aging Sam Soliman to regain the IBF Middleweight title. How Taylor even earned this title shot is another story altogether, but it is all irrelevant as he is now the champion. However he will not have too much time to savor his victory as he has assault and battery charges pending against him and an upcoming court fight that may turn out to be the toughest fight of his life, just when things started to look up for him in boxing, we wish him luck.
