By Scott Gilfoid: Super middleweight Andre Dirrell (19-1, 13 KO’s) will be resuming his promising career next month on August 19th against 31-year-old Canadian Sebastian Demers (31-4, 11 KO’s) in an 10 round bout in Oakland, California. Showing how serious he is about his career, Dirrell has chosen not to take a soft opponent in his first fight back from a year layoff due to a neurological problem that Dirrell suffered as a result of being fouled in his last fight in March 2010 in a win against Arthur Abraham.

Dirrell wants to start in where he left off by taking on a good fighter and winning impressively so that he can continue moving forward towards an eventual title shot. Dirrell has slipped from the upper tier of the super middleweight rankings because of his time off, but in two or three fights he should be knocking on the door for a title shot against one of the champions.

Ideally, Dirrell needs to face WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch again and give him a thrashing to avenge a controversial 12 round decision loss that Dirrell suffered in the Super Six tournament. Froch was fighting at home and won a 12 round split decision against Dirrell. I saw the fight and could only give Froch three rounds at the very most for his foul-plagued performance.

Demers has run into a bit of bad luck as of late, losing his last two fights by knockout to Brian Vera and Renan St. Juste. Dermers is a lot better than those losses would suggest, as he’s got a good chin but just happened to get hit right on the button by some tremendous shots from Vera and St. Juste. Any fighter in the division would have been knocked out from the punches that Vera and St. Juste nailed Demers with.