News broke just earlier today that the November 5th Mikkel Kessler vs. Robert Stieglitz WBO super middleweight title fight has been postponed, the result of a hand injury that Kessler suffered in training camp. Showtime then followed up that announcement with a quick message of their own, alerting boxing fans not to worry, and that the IBF Lucian Bute vs. Glen Johnson super middleweight title fight on the same night will still take place and be shown live on the network.
Of course, this is only a fitting continuation for the super middleweights right now, following the ongoing problems with finalizing the Super Six tournament. After fighter drop-outs, injuries, controversies and more (including an eye-injury and tournament drop out from Kessler), the Super Six Final between Andre Ward and Carl Froch was postponed until December 17th when Ward cut his eye in training camp.
Originally, the Super Six Finals would have been on October 29th, and then the very next weekend the Bute-Johnson and Kessler-Stieglitz fights would have taken place, putting just about every top super middleweight in action in a 7 day period, and setting up enticing matches between all of the combatants for the beginning of 2012. Then the Ward injury came, and now Kessler is back on the shelf, and his fight against Stieglitz has not been rescheduled just yet.
The ideal scenario of perhaps a Ward vs. Bute super middleweight showdown for all the marbles and bragging rights in the division won’t be able to take place until mid-to-late spring at the earliest, and team Bute may take a fight in the interim or wait for the Kessler fight to take place first, delaying things even further into the year.
So, the twisted, winding, extended journey of the Super Six and the top 168 lbers in the world continues.
