By Scott Gilfoid: In what could shape up to be a potential fight of the year bout, unbeaten super middleweight contender Anthony Dirrell (23-0, 20 KO’s) faces Canadian slugger Renan St Juste (23-2-1, 15 KO’s) in an important weeding out fight this Friday night on Showtime at the Chumash Casino in Santa Ynez, California.

The fight is a WBC super middleweight eliminator and the winner of the Dirrell vs. St Juste fight will be line to take on the winner of the Super Six tourney fight between WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch and WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward. This sets up a juicy scenario where Dirrell ends up facing Ward after he beats Froch. A fight between Dirrell and Ward would be huge.

Dirrell does the same things that Ward can do in terms of counter punching and throwing with speed, but he’s a much bigger puncher than Ward. But first Dirrell must deal with St Juste and that’s not going to be easy.

St Juste is a monstrous puncher and throws shots from weird angles. I don’t think I’ve ever seen St Juste throw a straight punch. Everything he throws seems to have a loop to it, and it’s difficult to track his punches because they loop so much. It’s like he’s clouting you with a hammer rather than a glove. I’m sure his trainers have worked on trying to straighten out his shots, but he seems to be effective because of this way of punching. I don’t St Juste would be nearly as good if he threw straight shots.

Dirrell, 27, is the younger brother of Andre Dirrell, a top contender with amazing hand speed and defensive talents and a former Super Six tournament contestant. Anthony, in some ways, is better than his brother Andre. Anthony is a lot meaner and punches with more power. He’s an excellent counter puncher and is capable of throwing with huge power even at a short distance. That alone makes him very dangerous for anybody.

I’m really looking forward to this fight. This is going to be a real brawl for as long as it lasts. The question here is how will Dirrell deal with St Juste’s powerful looping shots, and how will St Juste handle Dirrell’s better speed, pin point accuracy and incredible power at short range?

Also on the card will be a fight between super bantamweight Chris Avalos (19-1, 15 KO’s) and Jhonatan Romero in a scheduled 10 round bout.