By Jim Dower: Avni Yildirim (21-2, 12 KOs) and his promoter Ahmet Oener traveled to the World Boxing Council’s headquarter on Tuesday to meet with WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman to speak to him to have a rematch ordered against Anthony ‘The Dog’ Dirrell (33-1-1, 24 KOs), who defeated ‘Mr. Robot’ Yildirim by a 10 round technical split decision last Saturday night to claim the vacant WBC super middleweight title at the Minneapolis Armory, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
In addition to meeting with the Sulaiman personally to ask him to order the rematch with Dirrell, Yildirim also filed an appeal to have the fight ordered.
The win for Dirrell was the second time in his career in which he captured the WBC super middleweight belt. Dirrell held it from 2014 to 2015 after beating Sakio Bika by a 12 round decision. Dirrell lost the title to Badou Jack by a 12 round majority decision in April 2015.
Dirrell suffered a cut over his left eye in the 7th by an accidental head-butt. The cut worsened and eventually the fight was stopped after the 10th. It went to the cards, and dirrell got the ‘W.’ The scores were 96-94, 96-94 for Dirrell, and 98-92. Boxing News 24 saw it as a clear win for Dirrell in scoring it 96-94. The referee that saw Yildirim winning by a 98-92 score had a different viewpoint of the fight from what most of fans did. It didn’t appear to be a controversial outcome.
A rematch isn’t what Dirrell, 34, is interested in, as he wants to go after the biggest money fights available to him against David Benavidez, IBF champion Caleb Plant or WBA ‘regular’ champ Saul Canelo Alvarez or WBA Super World champion Callum Smith. Canelo likely won’t consider fighting Dirrell, but the other champions are potential options. If Dirrell gets stuck having to fight a low paying rematch with Yildirim, it’s going to be a big disappointment, because it’s not the type of fight that will do anything for Anthony. The money fights are against the other champions at 168.
Dirrell actually doesn’t want to fight Yildirim again. He wants to compete against the other champions at 168. A rematch against Yildirim isn’t going to do much for Dirrell.
It might be a good time for the WBC to come up with a good political solution to this rematch problem. They could order Yildirim to fight David Benavidez for the interim WBC title with the winner of the fight getting a title shot against Dirrell. That would make the most sense, because Benavidez, the Champion in Recess, wants his title shot against Dirrell. If he has to sit and wait for Dirrell to fight Yildirim a second time, it’ll slow things down with his boxing career.