By Eric Thomas: In the fallout from last night’s 11th round disqualification loss for Arthur Abraham against Andre Dirrell at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, Michigan, the American Dirrell is getting branded by many boxing fans as faker. This is after Dirrell was struck in the side of the head by Abraham in the 11th round, and then instead of collapsing immediately on the canvas, Dirrell reached for head, made a look of pain on his face and then fell over to his left side and then onto his back. It looked to some like Dirrell was faking.

The reason was because a lot of the times when a fighter is truly knocked out, they go down immediately and don’t have time to grab their head in pain. Whatever the case, in looking all the times in the fight that Abraham would show great pain when he would be hit with borderline low blows, and seem to act out as if he was hit low. It looked at times like Abraham was faking and playing to the referee to try and get an advantage by having points taken away from Dirrell.

This happened at least three times in last night’s fight and each case, the punches weren’t truly low at all but were right on the belt line. Having seen many of Abraham’s past fights, I’ve noticed that he often plays to the referee when he’s hit in the midsection. In one fight in particular, his first bout against Edison Miranda in 2006, Abraham’s pain reactions after getting hit in the midsection paid off with Miranda having point s deducted multiple times. On replay, the punches were on the beltline and not low.

However, Abraham showed very good acting skills to make it seem like the shots were low. And last night, Abraham was at it again, bending over in pain when hit in the midsection. The referee Lawrence Cole didn’t go for the apparent acting job on Abraham’s part and failed to take points away from Dirrell. However, my point is that this attempt at getting points taken away from Dirrell over and over again by Abraham with his acting may have put a thought in Dirrell’s head for him to play the same game and fake being hurt himself to get an advantage.

I don’t know if Dirrell was faking or not, because he seemed to be really out of it after getting tagged, even having one of his legs spasm while he was flat on his back on the canvas. But I can’t help wondering whether Dirrell took a clue from Abraham and decided to act out his own foul. Personally, I think Dirrell faked being hurt. He looked, at least to me, like someone who was faking and not doing a good acting job. Even when Jim Gray of Showtime tried to interview Dirrell, I thought Andre came across like he was acting.

I could be wrong, but that’s how it seemed to me. But I can see how Dirrell might have picked up on what Abraham was doing with his playing to the referee when hit low and decided to do the same thing. Abraham might not have liked being disqualified but he could have put the idea of faking in Dirrell’s head by constantly looking for the referee to help him out when he would get hit on the beltline or even above it.