On Saturday night, Universum Box Promotions featured two highly competitive womens' world championship bouts at Rostock, with both being shown live on ZDF television.

In the first bout, the two were fighting for the WBC, WIBF and vacant WBO Featherweight titles, and was a rematch between Ina Menzer and Esther Schouten, of the Netherlands. The two first met in January this year, which resulted in a convincing win for reigning champion Menzer.

In the rematch, the fight turned out to be a different story, with a confident challenger going on the attack from the start of the first bell. Menzer began with her guard much lower than usual, which an aggressive Schouten knew how to capitalize on. The first three rounds were pretty even, but Schouten seemed to have the upper hand in rounds 4 to 7 as well as the 10th, while Menzer had her best in time in rounds 8 and 9.

Both Menzer and Schouten are technically well-rounded boxers, but Schouten's better game plan very nearly cost Menzer her titles. However, Menzer did manage to hang on to them by the skin of her teeth, with a majority decision, with the judges scoring the bout 96-94, 96-94 and 95-95. A draw or even a win for Schouten could also have been an acceptable result of this close and well fought bout.

Like on New Year's Eve, the real fireworks began at midnight. Susi Kentikian faced Julia Sahin in a title defence of her WBA and WIBF belts and for the vacant WBO title. Sahin held the WIBF Light Flyweight title, but lost it due to inactivity. Since she broke with Universum, she has not been able get any fights for the last 18 months.

So on paper, this looked like a pretty straight forward job for Kentikian. But Sahin came to Rostock to fight for her chance, and made a very good job of it. Like Schouten she came out much more aggressive, than we used to know her. She controlled the center of the ring, moving forward with her guard high in the early rounds.

Sahin succeeded to get through with some punches to Kentikian's head, while the champion mainly got through with body shots and had problems opening Sahin's peek-a-boo defence.

The first three rounds were fought toe-to-toe and were fairly even. In the fourth and onwards Kentikian took over control increasingly. She penetrated the challengers defence with uppercuts and got more effective with her counter punching. At the same time Sahin's punching frequency dropped, causing her to lose almost every round.

Sahin kept fighting for her chance until the final bell, and deserves praise for her persistence and determination. But she was unable to prevent Kentikian's comfortable win. The judges scored the bout: 98-92, 97-93 and 96-94 all in favour of Kentikian.

Kentikian and Sahin are excellent boxers, and both also proved to have a big fighting heart, which gave the second title fight of the night more nerve, excitement and color, than the first one. It had really deserved the prime time slot last night.