Dirrell vs. Abraham postponed?

By Boxing News - 12/01/2009 - Comments

dirrell6544By Scott Gilfoid: According to an article from the news site Mlive, the Super Six tournament bout between talented American Andre Dirrell (18-1, 13 KO’s) and German based Arthur Abraham has been postponed due to Abraham suffering a bad case of the flu, causing the fight to be put off until March 7th. If this turns out to be the case, it will be disappointing news for fans of Dirrell and Abraham.

This fight is already being looked forward to by many people in the boxing world and it would horrible if they have to wait much longer for this fight to take place. Abraham must be in really bad shape for him. It looks like Abraham’s management don’t want to take any chances by putting him in with a talented fighter like Dirrell and risk having Abraham get schooled the way that Mikkel Kessler was last month against Andre Ward.

Abraham can take off as much time as he wants to get to whatever condition he needs to be for the fight with Dirrell, but it won’t change a thing. Dirrell is still going to beat him. Abraham is too slow to beat a fast fighter with hand speed and defensive skills like Dirrell. Abraham moved up in weigh to take part in the Super Six tourney.

Previously, Abraham held down the IBF middleweight title for three years until relinquishing it because he was having problems making the 160 pound weight limit. One of the problems that Abraham suffererd from in the past year while fighting as a middleweight was a low work rate. That problem was supposed to have been cleared up when he moved to the super middleweight division. Unfortunately, Abraham had the same problem in his first fight in the Super Six tournament against American Jermain Taylor, throwing few punches in the fight and mainly fighting hard in the last few seconds of every round.

For the most part, Abraham stood with both gloves glued to his face trying to prevent from getting hit cleanly. Abraham was able to hurt Taylor with a big right elbow to the head in the 9th. With Taylor still looking a little shaky in the 12th, Abraham finished him off with a right to the head. Strangely enough, the judges had Abraham well ahead of the fight at the time of the knockout.

I couldn’t believe the scoring of the fight. I had the fight about even going into the last round because Abraham wasn’t fighting hard for the full three minutes of every round, and instead seemed to be trying to steal the rounds by throwing a lot of shots in the last 15 to 30 seconds.

It would appear that Abraham is still suffering from the same stamina problems that have plagued him in the last year at middleweight. Unless Abraham finds a way to get around that problem, he’s going to get a boxing lesson from Dirrell when they do eventually fight.

Dirrell lost his first fight of the Super Six tournament against Carl Froch by a 12 round split decision. Dirrell showed great talent and heart by fighting strong despite his opponent roughing him up repeatedly form rounds five until the eleventh rounds. In the end, I, and along with many other people, saw Dirrell winning the fight and capturing Froch’s WBC super middleweight title. However, two of the European judges’ scored it in Froch’s favor.



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