By Scott Gilfoid: As we go into tonight’s fight between the talented Andre Dirrell (18-1, 13 KO’s) and the rather crude slugger Arthur Abraham (31-0, 25 KO’s) at the Joe Louis Arena, in Detroit, Michigan, we have a number of boxing fans with only a scant knowledge of the sport picking Abraham to win the fight. What these boxing fans fan to realize is Abraham is purely a slugger who has no boxing skills to speak of. He can’t box, and has only one style of fighting and that’s slugging it out. When things go badly for Abraham to tonight in Detroit, he won’t have the ability to switch to a plan B to try something different.

Abraham’s German trainers may say that they have other options to use if his periodic bum rushing doesn’t work, but I don’t buy that. Abraham fights the same way every fight. He basically covers up, looking a heck of a lot like a Joshua Clottey type fighter with his clam shell defense, and then throws a small handful of wild homerun punches at the very tail end of the round. He’s not exactly a constant worker. In terms of boxing skills, I’d rate Abraham a three. He’s very basic in what he does.

If you stand in front of him, like most of his limited opposition that has ventured over to Germany to fight him, then he has a chance to land his big shots. But you have to be really fighting his kind of fight for that to happen. If you’re dumb enough to fight a 50s style fight with him, then you deserve to lose. As I’ve seen many of Abraham’s opponents, they’ve basically just stood in front of Abraham, making it easy for him to land one of his big shots.

Abraham loads up on everything. I mean everything. And he often does it while running at his opponent like a short little Billy goat. It’s not a really professional-looking fighting style, to be sure, but it works against the mostly mediocre opposition in the middleweight division and it worked against Jermain Taylor in the first Super Six tournament bout last October.

Taylor fought a bad fight by standing in front of Abraham and paid for it by being stopped in the 12th round. That’s like a fighter deciding to stand and trade with a young George Foreman. It was a bad fight plan by Taylor and he has himself to blame for being knocked out. He tried to slug with a slugger, negating his incredible talents, and ultimately paid for it by being stopped. Dirrell won’t make that same mistake, believe me. Abraham is a one trick pony, with very little ability to box.

All Abraham does is cover up, play possum, rest a lot, and then go berserk in the final seconds of the round to try and steal the round and/or get lucky and maybe get a knockout. It’s pretty obvious that he has stamina issues. If you watch his fight with Lajuan Simon in 2009, Abraham looked like an exhausted marathon runner when he was forced to fight the full 12 rounds. Abraham was unused to having to fight that long, and looked horrible in the 2nd half of the fight. I had Simon winning most of the last six rounds and pulling out a 12 round draw. However, Abraham ended up winning the fight, which was held in his adopted country of Germany.

So what Dirrell will need to do is work the midsection of Abraham when he’s in his clamshell defense in order to get him to open up the clam. Abraham doesn’t seem like to get hit in his midsection and covers it up like he’s protecting a precious oyster. Dirrell has to shoot for the body, making Abraham lower his guard, and then work his head. Abraham has a bad habit of opening his mouth when he fights to gasp for breath. He fights a lot of the time with his mouth wide open like a big fish out of water.

Edison Miranda took advantage of this mistake by breaking Abraham’s jaw and pounding the stuffing out of him for 12 rounds in 2006. Abraham won the fight after the referee penalized Miranda an incredible five points. I thought it was horrible decision and had Miranda winning the fight easily even with the five point deductions. I only saw one instance in the fight where Miranda deserved to be penalized.

The 6’2” Dirrell needs to use his jab to pound away on Abraham’s clam from the outside to get him to open it. Abraham is only listed at 5’10”, but I think he may be even shorter than that. At the weigh-in yesterday, Dirrell looked at least five inches taller than Abraham when the two fighters stood eye to eye. I think Abraham is clover to 5’8” or 5’9”, at best, but not 5’10”.

I see that number as an inflated number, so he doesn’t look too small for some people. In terms of size and fighting style, I see Abraham as being very similar to the 5’9” Victor Oganov, who Dirrell destroyed in a 6th round TKO in 2008. Oganov was both too short and two slow for Dirrell, and took heavy punishment while covering up in a clamshell defense that looked a lot like the defense of Abraham.