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Defending his WBO light heavyweight title for the very first time, Juergen Braehmer turned aside the aspirations of Dmitry Sukhotsky at the Sport and Congress Center in Schwerin.
A year removed from a failed bid to unseat WBA kingpin Hugo Hernan Garay, southpaw Braehmer started off the fight with Sukhotsky strong, backing up the Russian prospect and controlling the pace.
But the champion began to tire from the effort by the middle rounds as the younger challenger soaked up everything thrown his way before coming back.
Sukhotsky showed maturity by taking over the contest by the eighth and punishing Braehmer for the next three frames, hurting the champion in the tenth.
But Braehmer regained his earlier momentum over the last two frames to capture the unanimous decision 118-110 and 116-112 twice.
Braehmer wins his fourth in a row, improving to 35-2 (28) while Sukhotsky, who had come into the contest as the WBO European kingpin, loses his first to fall to 14-1 (9).
On the undercard, previously undefeated Italian Emanuele Della Rosa, 22-1 (7), fought through a bad cut to win one of the cards during a split decision loss to Interim WBC middleweight titlist Sebastian Zbik, 28-0 (10).
Final scores were 120-109 and 117-111 for Zbik and 115-113 for Della Rosa.
Cruiserweight Alexander Alexeev, 19-1 (17), won his third bout on the bounce since dropping an Interim WBO title clash in January by knocking out Australia’s Daniel Ammann at 2:18 of the second in a battle of southpaws.
