By Scott Gilfoid: WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (26-0, 20 KO’s) believes that fellow Super Six tournament contestant Andre Dirrell (19-1, 13 KO’s) hasn’t picked up a lot of boxing fans in the United States. In an article at Sport.co, Froch went over his narrow, controversial 12 round split decision win against Dirrell last October, saying “Listen, a win’s a win. One of the judges saw it fit to score Dirrell a one point winner. It’s all about politics and who’s scoring and from where they see it. But let’s be honest, that performance he brought to the table that night, all that jabbing, running and holding. When it was time to stand in front of each other and fight, he tried to flee, run left or fight, or duck away and then when I closed the gap, he couldn’t run any more, he held on. That’s why American television hasn’t taken to him, because they don’t like people who fight like cowards.”

Froch sounds bitter about his questionable win, doesn’t? I don’t know what the big deal is. Dirrell fought the perfect fight, making Froch look like a slow plodder and even staggering him late in the fight. Froch failed to mention that part of that, I noticed. Like I’ve said before, the fight wasn’t even close. I had Dirrell winning by eight rounds to three with one even. And I’m not the only one that thought Dirrell won the fight by a wide margin.

A lot of other boxing fans felt that Dirrell easily won the fight. I thought the best punches that Froch landed were ones in which he was holding onto Dirrell and clubbing him in the back of the head round after round. Granted, I thought Dirrell clinched a bit much, but he was eventually penalized for that in the 10th, so it evened out. But Froch’s holding and hitting, rabbit punches, his body slam of Dirrell in the 5th and his constant shoving on Dirrell’s head were never penalized. I’ve never seen a fight where a fighter was able to get away with the things that Froch got away with without being penalized first and then eventually disqualified if they didn’t respond to the previous penalizations.

I think Froch should have been disqualified for the numerous fouls that I saw from him in that fight. But he’s wrong about the American fans not taking to Dirrell. I think of all the Super Six contestants, Dirrell has emerged as the most popular of the fighters in the United States. This is just a guess on my part; I think Dirrell is easily the most talked about fighter in the American press of the Super Six tournament contestants. The reason for that is likely because of Dirrell’s amazing boxing skills. He’s got the attributes of a number of top fighters from the past and present, such as Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson, Roy Jones Jr., and Floyd Mayweather Jr. Dirrell does it all and has the lightning quick reflexes and hand speed to match all those fighters.

American boxing fans really take to fighters like Dirrell with his amazing skills, and I think he’s probably number #1 fighter among the Super Six tournament fighters in terms of popularity right now. Dirrell came out of the Froch fight looking like a winner instead of a loser.