By Scott Gilfoid: WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward and top contender Andre Dirrell still are in search of a venue for their stage 3 Super Six tournament fight next month on September 25th. What’s known is that the bout will be taking place in a neutral venue, meaning that it won’t be held in Ward’s home city of Oakland, California or in Dirrell’s home stage of Michigan.

Wherever the fight takes place, it’s going to be an exciting event because of the talent of these two fighters. This fight winner of this fight is very likely going to be the eventual Super Six tournament winner. If Dirrell loses, it will be really unfortunate because it would mean that he would be eliminated from the Super Six tourney.

If this was any other fighter in the Super Six tourney, Dirrell would have excellent chance of winning and moving on to the next round of the tournament. However, Ward’s is a special case and is Dirrell’s toughest match-up by far in the Super Six tournament.

This is a toss-up fight, however. It’s one of those rare bouts that come along ever once in a great while where it’s almost impossible to pick a winner with any degree of certainty. You can’t just pick out Ward as the winner, even though he’s looked stunning in beating his first two Super Six tournament opponents Mikkel Kessler and Allan Green.

Dirrell doesn’t fight anything like either Kessler or Green. Indeed, Dirrell is much faster than Kessler and Green, almost impossible to hit and doesn’t waste time fighting on the inside. Dirrell won’t let Ward take this fight to the inside and be smothered.

Dirrell will make Ward miss and will move away when Ward attempts to get an inside position. If anything, I see this fight ending up a lot like the Devon Alexander vs. Andriy Kotelnik bout where both fighters battled it out on the outside for most of the fight.

In an outside game, you can’t just pick out Ward as the winner of that because Dirrell has the longer reach, the faster hands and the better defensive skills. This is why it’s a fight where you can’t really pick the winner.

If you say Dirrell, then you might be wrong if Ward can somehow break Dirrell down with his heavy pressure and mugging technique. But Dirrell appears to have better outside game and that could put the advantage on Dirrell’s side unless Ward can come up with a plan to neutralize Dirrell’s reach and hand speed advantage.