By Scott Gilfoid: Making his long awaited comeback after a little more than a year out of action, Andre Dirrell (19-1, 13 KO’s) will be facing tough 37-year-old veteran Darryl Cunningham (24-2, 10 KOs) in a scheduled 10 round bout on December 30th on the same card as former middleweight champion Jermain Taylor’s comeback bout in Palm Springs, California.

Dirrell, 28, wanted to face a quality opponent in order for him to get sharp for a hoped for fight against IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute in 2012. Dirrell’s team have already been in discussions with Bute’s management, so hopefully the fight can take place in early 2012 after Dirrell makes easy work of Cunningham.

Cunningham is a quality fighter with a lot of hand speed and decent power. He was supposed to have fought Kelly Pavlik in a tune-up fight before a Pavlik-Bute fight in November. However, Pavlik backed out of the Cunningham fight due to not being happy with the money. Cunningham last fought last month when he defeated Dante Craig by an eight round unanimous decisions. Cunningham has impressive wins over guys like Antwun Echols, Rubin Williams and Pat Coleman among many others. He’s got a good resume and a nice skill set. He should give Dirrell an excellent fight.

Dirrell last saw action in a fight against Arthur Abraham last year. Dirrell was completely dominating that fight in an embarrassing fashion until being fouled after slipping to the canvas in the 11th. Abraham was subsequently disqualified for the hit to Dirrell’s head while he was down and Dirrell was given the win. However, Dirrell experienced headaches and other side effects from the punch for months after and it’s taken him awhile to recover. But he’s now back to his old self and has passed a medical exam to get back in the ring.

Dirrell is perhaps among the top three fighters in the division, behind Andre Ward and Bute. He’s got amazing skills that other fighters would just die for. The hand speed, the defense and the power reminds one of a combination of Floyd Mayweather Jr., Sugar Ray Robinson and Sugar Ray Leonard. Dirrell can literally do it all in the ring. His only loss came against WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch in a fight that took place in Froch’s home city of Nottingham, England.

Froch got away with a massive amount of fouling in that fight and yet still appeared to lose on my card and in the minds of many boxing fans by a wide margin. I had Dirrell winning by a lopsided score of 8 rounds to 3 with 1 even. Before the fouling started in the 5th, I had Dirrell winning the first four rounds of the fight easily. Froch couldn’t lay a glove on Dirrell. However, in the 5th, Froch body slammed Dirrell to the canvas without being penalized and from there the fight went downhill rapidly with fouling left and right.