Dirrell confident he’ll beat Abraham

By Scott Gilfoid: Andre Dirrell (18-1, 13 KO’s) is feeling good physically and is ready to go for his March 27th bout next week against unbeaten Arthur Abraham (31-1, 25 KO’s) at the Joe Louis Arena, in Detroit, Michigan. Dirrell, 26, says in an article at the Las Vegas Journal, “I feel great. My back is 100%. Getting hurt may have been a blessing in disguise, because it gave me more time to prepare, and I’ve used it to work on the strategic aspect of the game plan.” Dirrell is facing a pure slugger in 30-year-old Abraham.

Dirrell will have to deal with the wild attacks from the German based Abraham, and will have to be on guard for Abraham rushing him at any time in the fight. Dirrell has a huge advantage in hand speed, boxing ability, size, youth and home town advantage against Abraham. That should be more than enough to get a fairly easy win.

It’s a good thing that the fight will be taking place in the United States, though, because I doubt very seriously that he could beat Abraham in Germany. I think it would be very tough for Dirrell to get a decision win over there unless he did something really special like knocking Abraham down three or four times in the fight. Abraham is a fighter that doesn’t throw a lot of punches.

Indeed, he has a work rate that I think is one of the lowest, if not the lowest, in the Super Six tournament. In looking at Abraham’s fights, he resembles Joshua Clottey with his fighting style. Abraham likes to cover up most of the time with his clamshell defense. He opens up at the very end of every round, as if programmed by his German trainers to do this.

Dirrell has to be ready for these late attacks, and has to be watching for the wide hooks that Abraham likes to throw. Dirrell should have no problems foiling Abraham’s attacks by using movement, a hard jab and straight left hands down the middle to catch Abraham while he’s throwing his wide shots. Abraham is capable of throwing straight punches from time to time, but his main forte is to throw wide hooks.

Dirrell says “He’s [Abraham] going to come forward with power, and you have to be smart and break his game. We have a great game plan, and I have no doubt I’m going to win this fight.” I have no doubts either. Dirrell doesn’t even need to really prepare all that much for this fight, because Abraham is the type of fighter you can figure out after watching one of his fights.

I think you can figure Abraham out by watching one round of his fights, because he fights the same way every round in every fight. There is no change. Abraham always covers up for the first three-fourths of every round, and then bum rushes his opponent wildly in the last seconds of the round to try and steal it. It’s kind of a lazy way of fighting, but the judges reward him by giving him rounds when he does this.

In a way, it’s a smart thing to do, and I don’t know why other fighters don’t adopt this strategy. Although I think it’s better for a fighter to fight hard for a full three minutes of every round, if they can still win rounds by fighting hard at the very last 10 to 20 seconds, then more power to them. But Dirrell has to be ready for Abraham when he does try to pull out a round by throwing wild shots at the very ends of every round. I think this is going to be a lot easier fight than many people think it will be. Abraham is just so wide open and predictable.

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