By William Mackay: Gary Shaw, the promoter for Andre Dirrell, was very impressed with the performance Andre put in last Saturday night against previously unbeaten Arthur Abraham (31-1, 25 KO’s). In an interview by Greg Leon at Boxing Talk, Shaw says “He [Dirrell] proved that that style Abraham used in the ring can never win against a pure boxer and Andre proved he was a better boxer that night.” It looked like Abraham was having major problems with the speed and movement that Dirrell was showing in the fight.

It wasn’t just a case of Abraham waiting until late in the fight to let his hands go. He was trying in the earlier rounds, but Dirrell was too fast during the first 9 rounds for Abraham to connect with anything more than one punch at a time. In the 10th round, Abraham dropped Dirrell with a right hand, but he knockdown wasn’t counted by referee Lawrence Cole.

Abraham went after Dirrell for the remainder of the round, but still ended up missing most of his punches. The 11th round was more of the same with Abraham chasing Dirrell around the ring until Dirrell slipped on the wet canvas. Abraham then took that opportunity to hit Dirrell while he was down. This led to Abraham being disqualified. Speaking about the disqualification, Shaw says “I feel it was intentional and desperate people do desperate things. And Arthur Abraham with 1:17 left in the eleventh was very desperate. He was behind on every card and his corner knew it. He looked down there and he saw the opportunity. I don’t think he was looking to knock him cold at that moment, but he certainly wanted to do some damage for the rest of the fight.”

I agree with what Shaw says. I think Abraham knew that Dirrell was down, and wanted to stun him with a hard shot while he had the chance. If nothing much was said about the shot, Dirrell would have been in a bad way for the remainder of the round and Abraham would have had a better opportunity of taking him out. Some referees don’t penalize fighters for hitting an opponent while they’re on the canvas.

I actually see it all the time where a referee will let it go and not take points off or disqualify a fighter. In fact, it’s rare that I’ve seen a fighter disqualified for hitting an opponent while they’re down. Most of the time, in the fights that I’ve seen where this kind of thing has occurred, the fighter gets away with it. If the referees were better at enforcing this rule, I think there would be less of it going on.

Abraham is a special case, because he’s fought almost his entire career in Germany, where he’s a huge star. Abraham can get away a lot of things while fighting in front of a home crowd, and he perhaps has become too accustomed to having that luxury. It’s a great advantage fighting front of your home crowd, to be sure, but it has a downside to it when a fighter gets used to having certain things ignored by the referee.

I’ve never seen Abraham hit a fighter while he was down before, but I’ve seen him commit a lot of other fouls before and I’ve never seen him once get penalized for any of them. I’ve seen his opponents get penalized, though. I have a feeling that if Saturday’s fight had taken place in Germany rather than in the United States, Dirrell would have been penalized multiple times for hitting on the beltline.

Every time that Abraham played to the referee in the Dirrell bout, I think Abraham would have benefited by having points taken from Dirrell. I also feel that Abraham wouldn’t have been disqualified. Instead, I think Dirrell would have been revived and given five minutes to recover from the blow and if he hadn’t it would have been a stoppage win for Abraham. That’s how I think it would have gone.