By Scott Gilfoid: The American Andre Dirrell (18-1, 13 KO’s) vs. Arthur Abraham (31-0, 25 KO’s) bout has been moved from the original March 6th date to March 27th due to the recent back injury that Dirrell sustained while training. The Abraham-Dirrell fight will now have to compete with HBO’s boxing card on the same night which has WBA light welterweight interim champion Marcos Maidana facing Victor Cayo, and Ali Funeka vs. Joan Guzman.
Still, I think for most American boxing fans, the Dirrell-Abraham bout will be the much more appealing option to view, so I don’t the competition negatively impacting the Dirrell-Abraham fight.
There hasn’t been any word as of yet about the severity of the talented Dirrell’s back injury. The last word that was heard is that Dirrell will be seeing a back specialist today to have him examine his back and give him treatment for his injury. Hopefully, the problem doesn’t become chronic or require an additional postponement.
Already, there are a number of fans crying for a replacement for Dirrell in the Super Six tournament. This, of course, is nonsense at this early point. Dirrell has to have at least a little time to see if his back responds to treatment. If it’s an ongoing injury that will require a long period of rehabilitation, then I can understand talk of a replacement for Dirrell. But at this point, Dirrell and his team haven’t said anything about needing any more than three weeks.
Apparently, this injury has occurred previously and Dirrell merely tweaked an already existing problem while training. Dirrell obviously has to take it easy and make sure he avoids doing whatever caused the injury to occur in the first place until his back is in better shape. But as far as taking Dirrell out of the tournament, I think this would really hurt the tournament in a big way.
Without Dirrell fighting in the tournament, you can hardly call it the “Super Six.” We’ve already got one replacement with Allan Green substituting for Jermain Taylor after Jermain sustained a bad knockout loss to Abraham in October. But if you take Dirrell out and replace him with anyone other than say IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute, then I think the tournament needs to be renamed to the “Good Six,” because it will hardly be considered the Super Six without Dirrell participating.
Also, without Dirrell fighting in the tournament, fellow American Andre Ward would pretty much win the Super Six tournament by default, as he would have no competition. Ward is clearly much better than the other participants Mikkel Kessler, Carl Froch, Green, and Abraham. Ward will absolutely destroy those guys, just as he already toyed with Kessler in his first stage 1 Super Six bout.
Kessler was predicted by many boxing experts to win the tournament, but Ward totally dominated him in beating him by an 11 round technical decision in November. Without Dirrell in the tournament as the only fighter that can compete with Ward, this means that Ward will pretty much win the rest of the fights without any problem. For me, it takes all the suspense out of the Super Six tourney.
They might as well crown Ward already if Dirrell can’t come back from his back injury. Anyway, this is a worst case scenario, because as of now, Dirrell’s back injury will only require that his bout with Abraham be postponed for three weeks until March 27th.
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