By Scott Gilfoid: I have a massive amount of respect for super middleweight Andre Dirrell (18-1, 13 KO’s) for only asking for a three week postponement for his Super Six bout against Arthur Abraham (31-0, 15 KO’s). Dirrell, 26, injured his back while training this week for what was supposed to be a fight on March 6th at the Agua Caliente Casino, in Rancho Mirage, California. Dirrell bravely decided to take only three weeks off to rehabilitate his injured back rather than months. I’m familiar with back injuries myself after hurting my back surfing not too long ago.

There’s no way my back would have healed in only three weeks. It takes a long time for most back ailments to heal, because it’s a delicate area of the body. Hopefully, Dirrell is 100% for the Abraham fight because with a back injury there’s a chance that Dirrell might not be at his full capabilities come March 27th.

Under the best of circumstances, Dirrell should still be able to dominate Abraham even with only 60% of his physical tools working for him. However, if Dirrell’s back is bad as mine was after my surfing accident, then I don’t know how Dirrell can win that kind of injury weighing him down. Injuries aside, Dirrell has the way more talented fighter with much better boxing skills and physical tools than the primitive caveman style of Abraham.

There are really no comparisons between the two of them. Abraham is slow moving and slow punching, and who likes to attack in a wild kamikaze type charge in the last seconds of every round. Abraham finds success often times, but part of that success has to be attributed to the sometimes mediocre opposition that he’s faced.

During the time that Abraham held down the International Boxing Federation middleweight crown, the division was pathetically weak with few talented fighters to speak of. Nothing has changed since Abraham moved up in weight to the super middleweight division. The middleweight division remains just as poor as it was when Abraham was the IBF champion.

With his back injury, Dirrell needs to make sure he avoids ducking low or moving his torso as much as he normally does because it could cause his back problems to flare up on him. It’s probably going to be difficult for him to just fight period, but he’ll have to try his best. With a slow slugger like Abraham, Dirrell should focus on staying on the outside and avoiding any big exchanges with him.

Abraham, knowing that Dirrell has a delicate back, he may try to bum rush him and try to rough Dirrell up to see if he crumbles. This is why Dirrell needs to stay in constant motion to keep Abraham from pouncing on him. Dirrell should fire off jabs and straight left hands to the head of Abraham to keep him helpless on the outside.

Most of Abraham’s successes in the past have come against stationary opponents with little movement and poor defense. Dirrell should be able to keep Abraham helpless by not standing in front of him. Dirrell is a modern fighter in comparisons to Abraham, so he should be able to dominate if his back isn’t too badly injured. It’s too bad that there’s not more time for Dirrell to rehabilitate his back. Three weeks is nothing, believe me. Dirrell might still be just as injured on March 27th as he is now.