The "Universum Champions Night“ on February 23 will feature boxing highlights including Universum super middleweight Jürgen Brähmer (30-1, 24 KOs) who will face WBA #6 rated Gusmyl Perdomo (14-2, 8 KOs). In the co-feature of the night European champion at light heavyweight Thomas Ulrich will step into the ring against his Ukrainian mandatory challenger Yuri Barashian. Both fights will be shown LIVE on ZDF from 11:00pm
Jürgen Brähmer (30-1-0, 24KOs) will have to show in his fight in Halle that he is ready for a world title. After his impressive KO win in the Rematch against Mario Veit last September he has shown that he learned from the only defeat in his career. The 29 year old super middleweight of Universum Box-Promotion is rated within the "Top Five" in all the sanctioning bodies, at #2 of the WBA and #1 of the WBO rankings. His opponent in Halle/Saale, the Venezuelan Gusmyl Perdomo, has been in the ring with Brähmers stable mates Mario Veit and Dimitri Sartison and is rated #6 of the WBA rankings.
"I'm happy to be in Halle. I'm boxing here for the first time as a pro. The situation is good. I am on top in the world rankings, but as for a world championship fight, the question remains what will Joe Calzaghe do? We know Gusmyl Perdomo from fights against Veit and Sartison. Although he has been defeated twice I will take him absolutely seriously. My training camp and sparring will be in Austria – in Sölden – at high altitude."
Light heavyweight Thomas Ulrich (31-3, 21 KOs) returns from an injury which caused him to cancel the fight last November in Karlsruhe. He will defend his belt against unbeaten mandatory challenger Yuri Barashian (24-2, 16 KOs) and he will have to make use of his great skills in order to beat the strong Barashian. With his new trainer duo Ralf Rocchigiani and Fritz Sdunek he wants to get back to the top and be ready for a shot at one of the world title belts in the near future.
The Universum-Boxer Ulrich is in a great mood previous to his fight: „It's sad that the injury to my hand had forced me to postpone the fight from the originally scheduled date last November but now it is in good shape and didn't require surgery. Barashian is a very compact boxer who aggressively moves forward," said Ulrich. "Halle is a good place for me because it was here in January 2007 that I had a great fight against Rachid Kanfouah and won the European title."
His new trainer Ralf Rocchigiani added: "Thomas is in terrific form. He knows what it's all about and trains extremely intensely. When the hand hand injury occurred in November, it would have been careless to defend the European title."
Unbeaten super middlweight Dimitri Sartison (21-0-0, 13KOs) will also continue his way to a world title fight. The spotlight boxing fighter will meet the Hungarian Jozsef Nagy (17-1-0, 11KOs).
An additional title fight of the event will feature Cruiserweight Alexander Alekseev who will defend his WBO-Intercontinental belt. The Russian, who is trained by Fritz Sdunek, has got an impressive fight record: 13 fights, 13 victories with 12 by K.o.
Another super middleweight of Universum Box-Promotion is the unbeaten Lukas Wilaschek. In Halle/Saale he faces the experienced american Tracy Sneed (23-2-0 17KOs) and he will try to extenc his record to 19 wins in 19 fights.
In front of their hometown crowd, the SES welterweight fighters Norman Schuster (13-1, 5 KOs) against Vasile Surcica (13-26-2, 5 KOs) and Oliver Güttel (11-1, 7 KOs) against Juan Martinez (5-5) will step into the ring in separate bouts.