Felix Sturm is sitting tight and awaiting confirmation from DKP regarding the signing of Felix Trinidad-Winky Wright for May of this year. Sturm's camp has confirmed that the number one fight on the list of Sturm is against Felix Trinidad. Sturm hopes that if the Trinidad-Wright negotiations go bust, he wants to land in Winky's spot for a potential mega bout with Trinidad.
Since Sturm's great effort against Oscar De La Hoya in 2004, the phone of Sturm's manager Peter Kohl has been ringing off the hook from American promoters trying to match Sturm against their fighters.
Matches have been discussed against Felix Trinidad, Bernard Hopkins and Jermain Taylor. Sturm still has to get by the tough Bert Schenk on March 5th in Germany. The word we get from our readers in Germany is that Schenk can punch with either hand and has decent boxing skills. We hear that Schenk tends to leave himself open and has problems with fighters who have good movement. Schenk has one TKO loss on his record against Armand Krajnc. Some may remember Krajnc from his battles with Sven Ottke and Harry Simon. Schenk is the number 3 contender to Hopkin's WBA portion of his middleweight crown. Sturm should not have any problems with Schenk as long as he doesn't get too careless and makes a mistake.
Sturm would gladly take a bout against Hopkins as well but, he knows that Hopkins may retire before he ever gets a chance with Bernard in the ring. Felix Trinidad is Bernard's mandatory for the WBA portion of his belt and Sam Soliman is the IBF's mandatory. Sturm is Bernard's mandatory for the WBO but will have to wait in line for a date with the executioner.
Sturm is craving a Trinidad bout with the winner to face Hopkins at a later date. A bout with Tito was discussed following Trinidad's win over Ricardo Mayorga but the Trinidad camp opted to go with a potential Winky Wright bout. The general feeling is that the bout with Wright would do much better pay per view numbers then a bout against Sturm. De La Hoya's pay per view battle against Sturm is Oscar's only pay per view that had a buyrate below exceptions. Top Rank honcho Bob Arum claims that he lost money on the De La Hoya-Sturm show due to the costs of putting it together. Fears of a low buyrate made the Trinidad camp and Don King back away from Sturm and lean towards Wright who is still hot after back to back wins over Shane Mosley.
Right now the Sturm camp is focused on Schenk and looking for a big fight in the near future. Should the camp of Sturm not be successful in luring Tito to the table, look for either Jermain Taylor or Sam Solimon to come into the picture as possible opponents in order to position himself in rankings for a mandatory shot at Hopkins.
