By James McGowan: Showtime’s Super Six World Boxing Classic has had its fair share of publicity, both good and bad, but to this writer it has hosted some intriguing clashes of styles and brought to life the profiles of all of its competitors bar, perhaps, Jermaine Taylor. This article will attempt to critically break down the 4 original remaining competitors and offer some thoughts as to its eventual winner.

Assuming the tournament is now taking the form of two semi finals and a final, which is by no means definite, the winners of Ward vs Dirrell and Froch vs Abraham will go on to fight for the trophy and cash prize. This leaves perhaps the most explosive and the most unpredictable fights that the tournament has to offer as semi final match ups.

Dirrell has perhaps the best chance of the four to beat Andre Ward. We all know that Ward can drag fights into his game plan in the same way that Bernard Hopkins fights currently. He doesn’t allow his opponents to fight at medium range, fighting exclusively on the outside or on his opponent’s chest and gave Allan Green in particular a torrid time against the ropes in his last fight. What Dirrell can do which none of the other super six fighters can is beat Ward for both footwork and hand speed. If Dirrell can dance around Ward like he did with Froch, throw some clean shots and get out of there, Dirrell has a very good chance of winning this fight. Ward, however, can win this fight easily if he can close off the ring and get on the inside of Dirrell.

A word on Ward. Many boxing fans have him as the top Super Middleweight and some are even throwing the P4P tag around, but it remains to be seen how he can fight different styles. His win against Kessler was impressive but Kessler has never been able to fight on the inside and is not fantastic on the outside either. He excels at boxing in the pocket, shown in his last fight which was fought almost exclusively in punching range with Carl Froch. Not a feat many other boxers have conquered, just ask Jean Pascal. Kessler also complained that he couldn’t see during the Ward fight, and we now know that Kessler’s eye injury has a serious effect on his coordination and vision, hypothetically if this was the case he would have been at a severe handicap. Allen Green looked, frankly, unable to cope with Ward’s style in their fight but after complained of being drained and weak at 168. This writer has every faith in Wards ability but it remains to be seen if he can cope with the different challenges he is about to face and it is certainly too soon to be throwing around the P4P tag until he has conquered his division. A worthy test being Dirrell.