By Liam Fitzgerald: The second round of fights in the Super Six kicks off this month with the undefeated German and ex-IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham taking on Andre Dirrel in Michigan, USA. Dirrel is coming off a controversial 12 round split decision loss to WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch in his last encounter and needs to win here to stand any chance of reaching the semi finals.
In my opinion, Dirrel did enough to beat Froch in that fight, even though I am British and was rooting for the Nottingham man that night. I felt his defensive skill made Froch look amateurish at times and in the late rounds he stepped up his offensive assault, landing some hard blows. However, many feel that Dirrel was too passive that night and didn’t deserve anything from the fight. What everyone can agree on is that he will need to show a lot more offensively to stand any chance of beating Abraham, as well as retaining his defensive awareness.
A certain other writer on this site has certainly over hyped the inexperienced Dirrel in the build up to this contest. He’s a good raw talent but comparisons with Bernard Hopkins, Floyd Mayweather and even the legendary Sugar Ray Robinson are ridiculous to say the least. His speed and footwork are impressive but he is not yet using these qualities sufficiently to suggest he can be an elite fighter. Fighting on ‘away’ ground against a current champion means at the very least you will have to out work your opponent and throw more to try and get a decision. So even though he out boxed Froch, he should not have too many complaints about the outcome. Hopefully, with more fights and experience behind him, he will learn and start to use his speed more effectively by throwing more punches.
The problem with this is that he is coming up against arguably the best and strongest fighter in the competition in the next fighter in Abraham. He is certainly better than his previous opponent Froch. A high work rate and punch output will be crucial for Dirrel’s chances in this fight as if he believes he can pot shot his way to victory, he is likely to get brutally KO’d. It would be unwise to adopt these tactics as Jermain Taylor did against Abraham in his last fight. Abraham’s high guard blocks virtually all of these pitter patter punches as he tends to absorb pressure in the early stages of the round before going on to throw his power punches towards the end of the 3 minutes. He likes to wear his opponents down like this and any fears about a loss of power in his move up in weight certainly proved to be unfounded in the Taylor fight. He is effective in the way he fights by maximizing his power and making his slight lack of speed less of an issue.
I don’t see Dirrel being able to offer too much different therefore from previous opponents of the tough German and so I would expect Abraham to effectively wear him down to get either a late stoppage or a points decision. The flashy combinations Dirrel will undoubtedly throw could make it close on the scorecards but if the judges reward rounds for the effectiveness of aggression, as they should do, I don’t see how the young American will be able to do anything to prevent defeat.
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