By Scott Gilfoid: The talented Andre Dirrell feels that Arthur Abraham will stop former WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (26-1, 20 KO’s) when they meet up in their stage 3 Super Six bout in September. I hate to say it but I completely agree with Mr. Dirrell. I think Froch is in over his head and is going to pay a major price for his poor defensive abilities by being knocking cold by the powerful Abraham.
Dirrell says “I honestly see Abraham knocking Carl Froch out. Honestly, I’m not being arrogant or biased just because I lost to Froch, he doesn’t bother me. It’s just that he’s easy to hit and we know that Arthur Abraham has one of the hardest punches in boxing today. I mean, I witnessed it firsthand. He’s a very strong fighter. I didn’t get a chance to witness Carl Froch’s blows because I was always giving him angles so he couldn’t really hit me but I know he takes a lot of punches and I know the punches that Arthur Abraham has will pose a lot of danger and poses a big threat on Carl Froch and he’ll end up knocking him out, possibly in this sixth or before.”
There you have it. Dirrell thinks that Abraham will knock out Froch. It’s actually not that hard of a pick when you look at how wide open Froch is on defense. He basically leaves himself open all the time by leaving his hands down by his waist when he fights. Froch doesn’t have the hand speed or the quick reflexes to lean away from the shots that are being thrown at him and takes a lot of the shots cleanly. This was the case in Froch’s recent 12 round decision loss to Mikkel Kessler on April 24th. Froch lost his title in that fight. But the loss should have been a wakeup call for Froch to change his habit of keeping his hands low and start learning how to protect himself better. Do I see that happening? Heck no. Froch will probably continue to use his head as a third glove to block shots and against a big puncher like Abraham; I think it will be fatal for Froch.
Dirrell thinks that Froch did poorly in his fight with Kessler, saying “Well, I didn’t see the fight going as it did. I thought it was going to be a closer fight but I saw that Mikkel pretty much dominated the fight.” I totally agree with Dirrell. I thought Froch was royally spanked by Kessler in a mostly one-sided fight. Kessler wanted it more, threw better combinations and ended up working a lot harder than Froch. It looked like Froch gassed out early in that fight and then tried to come on at the very end but didn’t have what it takes to get the job done.
Dirrell says he doesn’t care if he fights Froch again, because he thinks that he really won their stage 1 Super Six fight. I agree with him. I think Dirrell totally dominated Froch, winning eight rounds to three with one even. Dirrell says “If I do [fight Froch again], I could definitely see me getting in there and making it even worse for him the second time around.” So true. I think it would be much worse for Froch in a rematch, and I could see Dirrell either winning by a lopsided 12 round decision or stopping Froch. Once Dirrell started opening up with his power shots in the 10th, he was able to stagger Froch twice and batter him in the 11th and 12th rounds.
Dirrell recently defeated Abraham in his stage 2 Super Six bout. Dirrell says “I feel I did, all in all, an A+ performance. I worked on my game plan, I executed well, and I’m just proud of it and I really look to keep it up and train harder and look to bigger and better things.” Dirrell totally dominated that fight and was badly schooling Abraham until he lost his head and fouled Dirrell after he slipped on the canvas in the 11th round. Abraham was then rightfully disqualified. I can’t say I was the least surprised. I had a strong feeling that Abraham would resort to fouling at some point in the fight, because I’d seen many of his other fights where he had fouled his opponents with elbows and rabbit punches.
Dirrell plans on moving up to the light heavyweight division in the future after he wins the Super Six tournament. Dirrell says “I’m definitely looking forward to that. I do want to move up to 175. I’m looking towards doing it probably either after this tournament after knocking off a couple of other super middleweights and moving on up, but yes, I’m looking to reign in more than weight class in my professional career.”
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