 On 31 March 2012, Abraham defeated former EBU super middleweight champion Piotr Wilczewski by a lopsided unanimous decision to retain his WBO European title.Wilczewski was docked a point in the seventh round and was down in the eleventh round, though it was ruled a slip.In April 2012, the WBO announced that they had removed George Groves as their mandatory challenger and replaced him with Abraham, meaning the latter would now be in line to challenge WBO super middleweight champion Robert Stieglitz (41-2, 23 KOs).