In a somewhat surprising performance today, Juergen Braehmer continued to excel at 39 years of age. The longtime German contender dominated his younger American foe Rob Brant to advance to the World Boxing Super Series semifinals. There he will meet Callum Smith.
Father Time be damned, Juergen Braehmer (49-3, 35 KOs) will have none of our talk of age. Generally speaking when a fighter tries to drop down in weight in the last stage of his career, it never goes well. 39 year old Juergen Braehmer dropping back down to super middleweight for the first time in a decade to meet a young rising prospect in American Rob Brant (22-1, 15 KOs) did not then seem like a recipe for success.
I will note that in my preview I did express that I didn’t think the weight cut would be as big of deal as many others. I also expressed uncertainty in my pick even after selecting Brant like most everyone else did. Braehmer did look good before he was injured against Cleverly and never bothered to weigh as much as the light heavyweight limit. Rob Brant was also coming up in weight too.
You just don’t pick the old dropping down fighter to beat the good rising younger fighter basically ever because they don’t ever win. Braehmer did though. He also won comfortably as this was mostly an outclassing. The young American just couldn’t find his German foe and seemed to try less and less as the fight went on. Overall this was an excellent showing that completely revitalizes the former light heavyweight titleholder’s career.
Next up is Callum Smith. That fight is really intriguing as Smith struggled with Erik Skoglund while Braehmer had an easy time with Rob Brant. Yet, Braehmer will this time enjoy none of the same size advantage over the towering 6’3″ super middleweight that is Callum Smith. Plus, we know so little about Skoglund that it is hard to read what Smith struggling against him even means. The second round of these tournaments are going to be pretty great overall if they go through as planned.
