Abraham arrives in Detroit for Dirrell fight

By Scott Gilfoid: Arthur Abraham (31-0, 25 KO’s) has reportedly arrived in Detroit, Michigan, after flying nine hours from Germany. Abraham will be facing Andre Dirrell (18-1, 13 KO’s) next Saturday night at the Joe Louis Arena, in Detroit, Michigan. Abraham, 30, is considered the favorite by many boxing experts to beat Dirrell in their stage 2 Super Six tournament fight. However, Abraham is coming into the fight without much else going for him other than power. Dirrell has everything else going for him in this fight – hand speed, mobility, height, reach, youth and home town advantage.

This is going to be a bit of a shock for the so-called experts when they see how tough of a time that Abraham finds himself in on March 27th. Abraham struggled badly in his last fight against American Jermain Taylor last October, doing next to nothing during the first six rounds of the fight, which was held in Germany. Abraham mostly just held his gloves up in front of his face like he did in his first fight with Edison Miranda in 2006, and tried to block the incoming fire.

After the 6th, Abraham began to wildly rush Taylor, looking like he had no real plan other than to try and bowl him over like balling ball. It looked really crude, I must say. During these wild charges, Abraham would miss almost all of the punches that he threw at Taylor. The German crowd, however, ate it up, cheeringly madly for Abraham, encouraging him as if he was actually landing punches. He wasn’t.

The judges thought otherwise, and gave Abraham the rounds despite the fact that Taylor was boxing beautifully, ramming jabs and hooks down Abraham’s throat one after another like he was stuffing him with them. In the second half of the fight, Abraham did a good job of roughing Taylor up, landing rabbit shots, a nice elbow that staggered Taylor in the 9th. The referee somehow didn’t see the elbow. I don’t know how he could have missed it because it was painfully obvious.

I expect Abraham to fight the exact same way he did against Taylor. He’ll do zero for the first six rounds, just covering up and playing possum. Oh, he’ll try to win the rounds with a flurry at the very end of each round, but he won’t make a concerted effort to work hard like he should. In the 2nd half of the fight, depending on how badly Abraham is behind in the fight, he’ll start rushing Dirrell more and more to try and land one of his big homerun punches.

I expect Dirrell to have built up a huge lead by this point in time with his brilliant boxing skills. So by the time that Abraham starts up his offense in the second half of the fight, he’ll have no other choice but to fight like a wild man to try and either knock Dirrell out or muddy the water enough so that he can somehow earn or close decision or draw.

The way that Dirrell will handle Abraham’s wild attacks is by shooting jabs into his face, stepping to the sides like a matador when the bull-like Abraham comes steaming forward trying to land his punches. Abraham does everything backwards.

Abraham doesn’t fight the way you’re told. Fighters aren’t supposed to run while fighting, but if you look at Abraham’s fights, he’s springing after his opponents when he comes charging them. It must be kind of a shock to fighters to see someone doing this, because it’s just not something you see in boxing. But that’s what Abraham likes to do. Dirrell just has to stay calm, move to the left or right and get out of his way.

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