Dirrell and Ward could wind up the biggest stars produced by the Super Six tournament

By Boxing News - 04/01/2010 - Comments

Image: Dirrell and Ward could wind up the biggest stars produced by the Super Six tournamentBy Scott Gilfoid: If the Super Six tournament were to end today, perhaps the two biggest stars that the Super Six tournament has produced will be Americans Andre Dirrell (19-1, 13 KO’s) and Andre Ward (21-0, 13 KO’s). Both fighters have looked impeccable in their respective bouts. Dirrell, however, has a record of 1-1 in the Super Six competition, but he could easily be considered 2-0, due to the impressive manner in which he boxed World Boxing Council super middleweight champion Carl Froch and seemingly beat him on October 17th, last year in the first Super Six tournament bout.

Froch fans believe otherwise, saying that Dirrell wasn’t aggressive enough to take Froch’s title. However, a lot of people outside of the UK feel that Dirrell did more than enough to get the win over Froch and these people aren’t all from the United States. Even in losing to Froch, Dirrell looked nothing short of sensational, boxing skillfully, shooting jabs and straight lefts into Froch’s face all night long and giving him fits.

In Dirrell’s recent win over Arthur Abraham last weekend, Dirrell started in where he left off in the Froch fight, boxing, moving and rarely getting hit. Like Froch, Abraham lost his cool with his inability to land any significant punches and resorted to fouling. In this case, Abraham landed a powerful right hand to the head of Dirrell moments after the American had slipped and fallen on the canvas. The blow knocked Dirrell unconscious and resulted in Abraham being disqualified. It’s unfortunate that Dirrell had to win the fight in this manner, because he was well on his way to grinding out a lopsided decision against the shorter, slower Abraham.

For his part, Ward left no question in his first fight in the Super Six tournament last November, dominating World Boxing Association super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler and easily beating him by an 11 round technical decision. The fight was stopped in the 11th round due to two bad cuts that Kessler had over both of his eyes. At the time of the stoppage, Kessler was get badly dominated by the younger Ward, and looked to be on the verge of being stopped by Ward outright.

There’s not much opposition in the Super Six tourney, besides themselves, from keeping Dirrell and Ward from becoming huge stars and regular household names in the boxing world. Ward and Dirrell appear to be head and shoulders above the other fighters in the tournament. Allan Green, another American, has yet to fight in the tournament, but he’ll get his shot against Ward in June.

Although Green has some talent of his own, including a good right hand, but he’ll most likely get dominated and stopped by Ward. I think Green would give any other fighter in the tournament a lot of problems with the exceptions of Dirrell and Ward. The one bad thing about the Super Six tournament is that Dirrell and Ward have to fight each other in the first three rounds.

If not for that, I think both fighters would escape largely unscathed without a loss. Yes, I’m aware that Dirrell technically has a loss to Froch already, but I don’t consider that a loss. I see Dirrell as having really won that fight by the scores of eight rounds to three with one even. But, yeah, he does have a loss to Froch, even though Dirrell fought one of the most perfect fights I’ve ever seen from a boxer before.



Comments are closed.