By Scott Gilfoid: The talented Dirrell brothers will be fighting this Friday night on Premier Boxing Champions on Spike TV from the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Super middleweight contender Andre Dirrell (24-2, 16 KOs) will be fighting former world title challenger Blake Caparello (22-1-1, 6 KOs) in a 10 round fight.
Andre’s brother, Anthony Dirrell (28-1-1, 22 KOs) will be taking on the hard hitting former world title challenger Caleb Truax 26-2-2, 16 KOs) in a 10 round fight. This should be a great card from beginning to end.
Andre Dirrell, 32, will be looking to bounce back from a disappointing 12 round decision loss last May in a very close fight. Dirrell was the better fighter of the two in that bout, but he was knocked down twice in the 2nd round. That put Dirrell behind big time in the fight. He was able to come storming back to make it close at the end in losing by the scores of 114-112, 117-109 and 114-112. That 117-109 score was a joke.
The fight very narrow at the end. If you take away the two knockdowns in the 2nd, Dirrell would have won. He fought well other than in that round. Unfortunately for Dirrell, he lost the last 11 months of his career with him being inactive. Losing a close fight is one thing, but losing an entire year of your career through inactivity is a bigger blow.
Dirrell cannot afford to stay out of the ring like this, because he’s already had a couple of long layoffs besides the last one. If you count the time that Dirrell has missed from 2010 to 2016, it comes to almost four years. That’s tough on a fighter to miss that kind of time and expect to stay sharp. I was surprised at how good Dirrell looked against DeGale last year. For a fighter that had missed three years of his career, Dirrell looked good until gassing out at the end. Dirrell has now missed another year in his layoff since the DeGale fight, and he might be rusty on Friday.
Caparello, 29, has won his last three contests since being stopped in the 2nd round by WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev in August 2014. Caparello knocked Kovalev down in the 1st round. However, Kovalev came back strong to drop Caparello three times in the 2nd round to get the stoppage.
Former WBC super middleweight champion Anthony Dirrell has a tough fight on his hands against Caleb Truax. Dirrell lost his WBC title to Badou Jack in April of last year in a 12 round majority decision loss. #3 WBC Dirrell came back from the defeat to beat Marco Antonio Rubio by a 10 round decision last September in a one-sided fight. It was a good performance by Dirrell. With Dirrell’s high ranking by the World Boxing Council, it’s only a matter of time before he gets a crack at the winner of this Saturday’s fight between Badou Jack and Lucian Bute. Dirrell might not get a title shot in 2016, but he’ll be in good position to fight for the WBC title in 2017 if he can keep winning and stay active.