By Scott Gilfoid: If there was ever a fight where it was next to impossible to pick the winner because of the immense talent between the two fighters, it’s the Super Six tournament fight between once beaten Andre Dirrell (19-1, 13 KO’s) and World Boxing Council super middleweight champion Andre Ward (22-0, 13 KO’s), who will go at on September 25th at a still to be determined venue. Both Ward and Dirrell have talent that the other Super Six tournament fighters would just die for. Dirrell, 26, has blazed a trail in his short five year pro career, beating all of his opponents except for the one glaring loss on his record to Carl Froch.
That fight occurred in Froch’s home city of Nottingham, England, and many people, including myself, saw the fight as a fairly lopsided win for Dirrell. However, losing fights in other’s home towns are part of boxing and something that likely never go away completely. The good thing is that the loss is behind Dirrell, and he’ll likely not have to deal with it again, since there’s a very good chance that Froch will be beaten in his next Super Six tournament fight against Arthur Abraham and eliminated from the tournament in that loss.
Ward has had easier than Dirrell, matched up against a slow Mikkel Kessler and a non-punching Allan Green. Ward looked great in those fights, showing incredible ability in being able to avoid the shots from Kessler and Green. Ward was simply a level or two above Kessler and Green, and his talent was just too good for them to compete with him. Had it been Froch in the ring with Ward, my guess Ward would spank Froch just as easy as he did Green and Kessler. Ward would have been able to adapt quickly once Froch turned the fight into a physical wrestling/MMA fight with his body slamming, pushing and rabbit shots. Ward would have stayed on top of Froch, punishing him with shot punches and paying him back when he would throw rabbit shots. There’s no way that the judges could screw up the scoring between Froch and Ward.
It’s really hard to tell who will win the Dirrell and Ward fight. They’re both so evenly matched. Everything that Ward does well, Dirrell does the same thing about the same. Dirrell may not be as good of an inside fighter, but he’s also smart enough to know he needs to stay away from mixing it up in close. Ward will have to try and get Dirrell to fight it out on the inside if he wants to have a chance at winning the fight. On the outside, Ward would have no chance whatsoever. As long as Dirrell uses his legs, moves a lot and tags Ward with short punches, then this should be an easy fight for Dirrell along the lines of his win over Arthur Abraham in his last fight in March. Dirrell will move, stick jabs in Ward’s face and do the opposite of what his last opponents have done. Because of their evenly matched talent, I can see this fight ending up in a 12 round draw over and over again. It’s one of those fights where they could fight 100 times and it ends up a draw every time.
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