By Scott Gilfoid: It’s pretty much academic now that the United States will be winning the overall Super Six tournament. Not only will we have the ultimate winner with either Andre Ward or Andre Dirrell taking the honors, but our fighters will score higher than the other European fighters in the Super Six tourney. Ward’s shellacking last Saturday night of Mikkel Kessler, the tournament’s number #1 seed, for all practical purposes put a seal on the win for the Americans.

All that awaits is the actual fights ahead, but I think we have this one in the bag. In the first bouts of the tournament, World Boxing Council super middleweight champion Carl Froch beat American Andre Dirrell by a controversial 12 round split decision in a fight that many boxing fans are now considering a home two decision. Froch was given the victory by the scores of two European judges who scored the fight. Like I’ve mentioned previously, I had Dirrell winning quite easily eight rounds to three with one even.

That’s not to say that Dirrell fought the perfect fight, because I didn’t like all the holding and moving he did. But the art of boxing is about hitting and not being hit, and Dirrell was very rarely hit by Froch in the fight. I’m not going to twist things and say it was a masterful performance, though, like some of the fans are saying about British heavyweight David Haye’s 12 round split decision win over World Boxing Association heavyweight champion Nikolay Valuev on November 7th.

I don’t think it’s interesting to see any fighter run, so lets get that much straight. Dirrell won the fight by boxing, but it wasn’t pretty like Ward’s win over Kessler. But I do see Dirrell redeeming himself in his next fight against Arthur Abraham, the Super Six tourney leader, on January 23rd in the United States. Dirrell will win that fight without any problems because of his superior speed, movement and defense.

If it makes people feel good to pick against Dirrell, go ahead, but you’ll be wrong. Abraham is too slow, too short and too limited with his punch output to beat Dirrell. Abraham looked poor for most of his last fight against Jermain Taylor on October 17th, mainly waiting until the last 30 seconds of every round to let his hands go and throw flurries. That kind of fighting style won’t get the job done against a superior technician like Dirrell.

Abraham hurt Taylor with a big right hand elbow in the 9th round of their fight, and Taylor seemed to never recover from that blow. If Abraham tries any of that crap against Dirrell, he’ll be hitting nothing but air because Dirrell will make him miss all night long with his crude flurries at the end of ever round.

I think Abraham has won his last fight of the tournament because from here on out, he’s going to get exposed and beaten by Dirrell and Froch. As far as Froch goes, he’ll beat Kessler next year in their fight but after beating him, Froch will be knocked out of the Super Six competition in the semi finals. Kessler won’t make it to the Super Six semi finals because he’ll lose to Froch and he may possibly lose to Taylor as well.

The Super Six tournament winner will come down to either Dirrell or Ward. I can’t tell which one will win it, but we’ll have a pretty good idea when Dirrell and Ward meet up in the final fight of the first round of competition. Dirrell has the overall physical and offensive tools compared to Ward, but the judges won’t give him the benefit of the doubt unless he uses them.