BOXING: NO PROBLEMS FOR ABRAHAM AS MARQUEZ IS BEATEN

Agence France Presse
November 8, 2008 Saturday 10:54 PM GMT

World middleweight champion Arthur Abraham had few problems as he
defended his IBF title with a sixth-round technical knock-out win
over United States fighter Raul Marquez on Saturday.

Abraham was forced to withdraw from the original fight on October 4
when a bout of flu knocked him out, but was back to his most powerful
best to defend his title for the eighth time.

"For a while there, I thought I was in with a good shot, but he is
very strong and kept coming at me," said Marquez, who refused to come
out for the seventh round.

"I tried, I tried my best and I knew it would be a hard fight, but
he was just too quick and too strong in the end."

Abraham is now looking for a big-name fight in the middleweight
division and has yet to find an opponent to blemish his perfect record
of 28 wins.

"In any case, I must say he is a very experienced boxer and a good
fighter, but I am not bad either," said the champion.

"I had my tactics of a slow build up and then raise the tempo, it
was too much for him.

"He disappointed the audience, because he had had enough and I can’t
really understand that, but it wasn’t really a problem out there
for me."

The 28-year-old was only tested by Marquez on rare occasions and
the champion caught the United States fighter flush in the face,
passing straight through his guard, as early as the second round.

Marquez was punished again at the end of the third with a brutal
flurry of punches and was regularly put on the back foot.

The Armenian-born Abraham, who is based in Berlin, finally pinned the
Mexico-born southpaw in the corner in the sixth round with another
succession of rapid-fire punches.

Although the veteran fought his way off the ropes and survived to
the bell, Marquez had taken more than his share of punishment and his
corner signalled there would be no seventh round to hand Abraham the
technical knock-out.

As mandatory challenger Marquez, 37, had won the right to face Abraham
when he beat Giovanni Lorenzo in June when he picked up the 41st win
of his career with 29 knock-outs, but now he has four defeats after
facing Abraham.

Abraham is looking for a unification fight against compatriot and
world WBA champion Felix Sturm, with the purse reported to be worth
2.5 million euros (3.2 million US dollars).

"The fans in Germany have the right to know who is the best,"
added Abraham.