By Scott Gilfoid: The March 27th Super Six bout between unbeaten Arthur Abraham (31-0, 25 KO’s) and Andre Dirrell (18-1, 13 KO’s) comes down to this: Unless the 30-year-old Abraham can score a knockout, he’s going to end up getting badly out-boxed and will end up losing by a wide decision. That’s pretty much what Abraham’s chances are in this fight. He’s too slow, too short and too defensively flawed to compete with Dirrell in the center of the ring and will have to load up with everything and hope for a knockout if he wants to win this fight.
The problem is that Dirrell won’t be standing directly in front of Abraham like Jermain Taylor, Edison Miranda, Khoren Gevor and Sebastian Demers, some of Abraham’s better known knockout victims. Dirrell, 26, is better known as “The Matrix” for his ability to get away from incoming fire. Abraham is no different than any other of Dirrell’s opponents in terms of offensive ability.
In fact, I’d say Abraham is a little slower than even some of the 2nd tier opposition that Dirrell has faced in his short five year pro career. I do believe that Abraham is a little stronger than Carl Froch, Curtis Stevens and Victor Oganov, the three biggest punchers that Dirrell has faced in his career. However, Abraham isn’t much stronger than any of them.
What makes Abraham dangerous is that he throws hooks in an exaggerated manner. I’ve never seen a fighter throw as wide hooks with such poor hand speed like Abraham before. It’s surprising that Abraham’s opponents don’t take advantage of Abraham’s wide hooks by ramming a straight right down the middle and stopping him in his tracks.
But then again, much of Abraham’s prior fights have come against what I consider poor opposition. That’s not his fault. The middleweight division has been dreadful since Bernard Hopkins moved up in weight to the light heavyweight division. Hopkins, if he was still fighting at middleweight, would have beaten the stuffing out of Abraham years ago and Abraham would never have been able to capture the IBF middleweight title with Hopkins still around in the division.
I see Dirrell as just as talented as Hopkins, only with much more hand speed and defensive ability. He’s going to box circles around Abraham on March 27th, and make him look like a rank amateur. Dirrell is fighting on another level than Abraham. When you take a fighter that has been beating soft opposition and then put him in with a guy that has skills and speed beyond what that fighter has ever faced before, bad things happen.
I see Abraham getting severely outclassed by Dirrell in this fight. And there won’t be any way that Abraham will be able to win rounds by throwing a small handful of punches like he usually does in the last thirty seconds of each round. Abraham isn’t going to win rounds by connecting with 10 punches in the last seconds and doing virtually zero other than cover up with his crab defense in the first two and half minutes of every round.
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