Photo: Team Sauerland – By Scott Gilfoid: It was a sad night for fans of Arthur Abraham (31-1, 25 KO’s). After getting completely dominated by the talented Andre Dirrell (19-1, 13 KO’s) for 10 one-sided rounds, the slow-footed, slow handed Abraham lost his senses completely and hit Dirrell with a hard right hand after Dirrell had slipped on the canvas and was on one knee. The right hand badly hurt Dirrell, knocking him out briefly. Immediately, Abraham put his hands out to his sides as if to say he hadn’t done anything. Referee Laurence Cole was having none of his fouling shenanigans and immediately disqualified Abraham at 1:13 of the 11th round.
It was a disappointing way for this one-sided fight to end, as Dirrell had completely dominated Abraham from start to finish, knocking him down once in the 4th with a straight left hand and then missing a knockdown in the 7th after blasting Abraham with a big left that caused him to fall into the bottom ropes, which prevented him from going down. Abraham did little in the fight, hiding behind his crab defense for most of the fight and throwing few punches.
When Abraham would try to throw shots, he missed more of than not. Abraham just didn’t have the hand speed to compete with Dirrell. It was a plain case of a fighter over his head in terms of talent. As the rounds progressed, Abraham became more and more desperate as his situation began to look really bleak. Dirrell was just too fast for him, and kept punching him in the face over and over again.
In the 7th round, Abraham was cut over the right eye after getting hit with a straight left hand from Dirrell. The cut would be a problem for Abraham until it was treated by a ringside doctor during a brief examination in the 9th round. The doctor seemed to have no clue that he was only supposed to examine the cut and not treat it.
I was surprised he didn’t break out a needle and start stitching it up for Abraham, because the dude went way over board in treating the cut. In the 10th round, Abraham missed a knockdown after hitting Dirrell with a right hand that put Dirrell on the canvas. Referee Lawrence Cole thought that Dirrell had tripped while being punched by Abraham, and it did look a lot like that to a point. I thought it was a knockdown, but either way it didn’t really matter.
Dirrell missed a knockdown, so this was Abraham’s turn. After the missed knockdown, Abraham really went after Dirrell, throwing a lot of punches, landing some but mostly missing. The 10th was Abraham’s best round of the fight by far. Unfortunately, Abraham had a mental breakdown in the 11th round, and blew the fight by landing a right hand after Dirrell slipped on the ring logo while backed in the corner.
There was no point in throwing the right hand after Dirrell was down, because he was clearly on one knee. However, I think Abraham was upset, frustrated about how badly he had been dominated in the fight and wanted to get Dirrell no matter what. Instead of keeping his head together and focusing on trying to score a clean knockout, Abraham had to blow it and throw a shot while Dirrell was down.
I know a lot of people are thinking that Dirrell faked it, but we’ll never know because it’s something that can’t be proven. But Abraham made a huge mistake by throwing that punch while Dirrell was in that position. I think Cole did the right thing by stopping the fight and disqualifying Abraham. Hopefully, Abraham learns a lesson from this fight. He can’t resort to fouling out of frustration. Boxing has a big mental part to it and if you can’t control your frustration, you end up getting disqualified like Abraham was on Saturday night. He only has himself to blame for giving Dirrell the chance to win the fight like this.
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