In Germany this afternoon, Khoren Gevor obliterated Felix Sturm, and due to completely incomprehensible scoring, lost the fight. Officially, Sturm won a unanimous decision, 117-111, 115-113 and 115-113.  With the forces of the boxing universe conspiring against him, Gevor was able to get inside on Sturm at will, and just unload on his body in the early rounds. In the third, he even appeared to score a flash knockdown that the referee ruled as a slip.  The stockier Gevor completely controlled on the inside, but within about 10 seconds of getting there, the ref would step in every time and push the fighters about 2 meters apart from each other.  Was there holding?  No.  Was there headbutting?  Heads were touching, but there wasn't anything that looked like a butt, and neither fighter got cut.  So why was the referee doing this?  I don't know - I guess he was inventing his own rules.

In the middle rounds, Gevor slowed down his workrate a bit, but he still appeared to be throwing about 80 punches a round.  After about the 7th round, Gevor appeared to even control the action when they were on the outside.  Despite being the longer fighter, Sturm just refused to use his jab to keep Gevor off of him, and Gevor was able to bounce in, land a few jabs, land a few body shots, and bounce back outside of Sturm's range.  Rounds 8 and 9 were the only rounds I scored for Sturm, as Gevor really started to slow, and Sturm started to finally land more effective shots.  That, however, was short lived, and Gevor came back out with a vengeance in rounds 10 and 11, resuming his high workrate and just pushing Sturm around the ring on the inside.  The 12th was a bit of a toss-up, although, both fighters did look like they were still trying to win the fight.

Throughout the entire fight, Gevor probably threw twice as many punches as Sturm.  He controlled the action for all but one round.  He landed the harder shots in all but about three rounds.  He blocked about 85% of what Sturm threw at him, and although Sturm probably blocked around the same percentage of punches, the sheer volume of Gevor's ooutput means that he landed many many more punches than Sturm.  Gevor would come forward in a workmanlike manner, pounding away, one or two shots at a time.  Maybe twice a round, Sturm would take a step back, land a flurry, and the extremely pro-Sturm crowd would go wild.  Still, winning 10 seconds of each round doesn't mean that he won a majority of the rounds, especially when Gevor was never so much as stunned all fight. 

On the bright side, this means we probably get to see Kelly Pavlik put a loss on Sturm's record.  If Gevor had won, Pavlik would have been left without a dance partner.  With Sturm winning, Abraham vacating and Williams unavailable due to Bob Arum's vendetta against Al Haymon, Sturm is the only fight that really makes sense for Pavlik, and the chatter about that fight is too loud at this point for the fight not to happen.  I can't wait for that fight to happen, just so I can see Sturm flat on his back.  Sure, Sturm got robbed in his own fight against Oscar de la Hoya many years ago, but that mojo has just carried too far at this point.