By Scott Gilfoid: Andre Dirrell (18-1, 13 KO’s) isn’t pleased with how he had his perfect record marred by a questionable 12 round split decision against Carl Froch in their stage 1 Super Six bout on October 17th last year. Dirrell wants to make up for that loss in his next fight against unbeaten Arthur Abraham on March 27th, and it would seem that Dirrell has the perfect opponent to do that against. Abraham, although much more skilled and powerful than Froch, doesn’t have the hand speed or movement to really test Dirrell.

Abraham does fight well when he has an opponent that stands directly in front of him all night long looking to engage. Abraham even then doesn’t always do well as we saw in his first fight against Edison Miranda in 2006. Abraham received a broken jaw in that fight despite having his clamshell guard up through most of the fight. When Abraham’s guard comes down when he throws shots, his chin is very ordinary and he’s like any other fighter. He tends to leave himself badly exposed when he’s attacking his opponents. Indeed, Abraham looks like a reckless wild man when he charges forward at a run throwing wide hooks and leaving himself open for counter shots. Dirrell will strike like a snake when Abraham makes his wild attacks and end up tagging him repeatedly with hard shots.

For some fans not entirely familiar with Abraham, they see him as a huge knockout artist based on his 12th round knockout win over Jermain Taylor in October. But that win doesn’t really prove much, because Taylor was already feeling the effects of earlier knockout losses to Froch and Kelly Pavlik, and appeared to have lost much of his punch resistance from those two defeats.

Abraham can punch, there’s no question, but he’s no second coming of Julian Jackson or anything close to that. Abraham is just an average run of the mill hard puncher with power very similar to Dirrell. If I was to pick who the harder puncher of the two was, I’d give it to Abraham by a slight margin. However, Dirrell is a much more dangerous puncher because he can punch hard even while throwing blinding fast flurries, and plus his hand speed and southpaw stance make him even more dangerous.

As such, I see Abraham’s power as totally overrated by fans. Those same fans will quickly change their opinions about Abraham after they watch how easily Dirrell beats Abraham on March 27th. Abraham, with his horribly slow hand speed, won’t lay a glove on Dirrell and will spend the entire night hitting mostly air and looking like a rank amateur for his efforts.

Dirrell is going to put on a punching clinic against Abraham, and batter him at will and send him back to his adopted country of Germany a beaten up loser. This is going to be such a one-sided fight that people will change their minds about picking Abraham to win the Super Six tournament. I have idea why anyone could possibly think that Abraham can win the Super Six tournament if they’ve seen him fight even once. He just looks totally primitive and doesn’t have it.

I’m hoping that Froch can beat his next opponent Mikkel Kessler on April 24th so that Froch can keep moving forward towards an eventual rematch with Dirrell. I think Dirrell will beat Froch even worse than he did in their first fight and gain revenge for the horrible decision in that fight.