Dirrell to show his stuff against Cunningham on 12/30; Taylor battles Nicklow in comeback bout

By Boxing News - 12/16/2011 - Comments

Image: Dirrell to show his stuff against Cunningham on 12/30; Taylor battles Nicklow in comeback boutBy Scott Gilfoid: In what may be one of the best Showtime televised cards in years, Andre Dirrell (19-1, 13 KO’s) will be making a comeback after a year out of the ring to face the hard hitting Darryl Cunningham ( 24-2, 10 KO’s) on December 30th in a scheduled 10 round at the Morongo Casino Resort & Spa in Cabazon, California.

In addition to this tasty fight, 33-year-old former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Jermain Taylor (28-4-1, 17 KO’s) will see action on a 10 round bout against Jessie Nicklow (22-2-3, 8 KO’s) in Taylor’s first fight in over two years since losing to Arthur Abraham by a 12th round knockout in October 2009.

The interesting thing about the Taylor fight is that he’s back at middleweight after a failed three-fight experiment at super middleweight that saw Taylor lose two out of three fights. Taylor has rededicated himself to his conditioning and is keeping his weight down and isn’t using training camp as a fat far to take off massive amounts of weight. That was one of the major reasons why Taylor would gas out late in his fights and get knocked out.

He was never knocked out early; it was always after he would fade from having struggled so hard to make weight. But now he’s keeping his weight low and didn’t come into training camp weighing 200 lbs. Taylor will be in excellent condition on the 30th and will have no problem going 12 rounds if need be. Taylor wants to pick up some quick wins and challenge for a title against one of the champions.

Dirrell, 28, is the real star of this card. He hasn’t fought since being fouled by Arthur Abraham back in March 2010. The time off has helped heal the head injury that Dirrell suffered in that fight, and he’s ready to resume his promising career and move forward to try and get a fight against IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute in 2012. Dirrell now has competition with his talented brother Anthony Dirrell, who is ranked #1 by the WBC.



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