By Dave Lahr: The group 1 stage of the Showtime Super Six World Boxing Classic six-fighter tourney will start on October 17th, with WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (25-0, 20 KO’s) fighting challenger Andre Dirrell (18-0, 13 KO’s) in Nottingham, England. In a different location on the same date, former International Boxing Federation (IBF) middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (30-0, 24 KO’s) will be fighting former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Jermain Taylor (28-3-1, 17 KO’s).

The final fight in group 1 competition will be Andre Ward (19-0, 12 KO’s) taking on World Boxing Association super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler (41-1, 31 KO’s) on November 21st. The second part of the tournament, group 2, will begin in 2010.

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The Froch vs. Dirrell fight is one that many boxing fans are looking forward to. Dirrell, 26, is a little known fighter with fast hands and good amateur credentials. Dirrell won a bronze medal in the 2004 Olympics for the United States and has looked especially sharp since turning pro in 2005.

Dirrell defeated Derrick Findley by a 6th round stoppage in his last fight in March 2009. Before that, Dirrell has victories over Victor Organov, Anthony Hanshaw and Curtis Stevens as his most notable wins of his short pro career.

Froch will have his hands full with Dirrell, because he’s unlike any of Froch’s prior opponents that he’s faced in his career. Dirrell won’t stand in front of Froch like Jean Pascal and Taylor did, so finding him with power shots won’t be as cut and dried as it’s been in the past for Carl.

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Jermain Taylor will have to show a lot of improvement in the area of his stamina and decision making it he wants to get a win over Arthur Abraham on October 17th. Taylor has suffered with a problem with his endurance as far back as his two fights with Bernard Hopkins four years ago in 2005.

However, it’s gotten much worse since then and now Taylor is pretty much limited to fighting effectively for only six rounds before fading in the second half of his fights. The problem hurt Taylor in his two fights with Kelly Pavlik, causing Taylor to lose both of them and ion his bout with Ronald “Winky” Wright, turning a fight that he was ahead of in the first half into a 12 round draw.

Abraham has also dealt with problems effecting his work rate. Although his problem is said to be caused by the huge amounts of weight that he has had to drop to make the 160 pound middleweight limit, but the fact remains that Abraham seems to be only able to fight hard for brief spurts of every round.

He’s been fighting like this since his controversial first victory over Edison Miranda three years ago in 2006. Fighting hard for only 20 to 30 seconds of every round won’t get the job done against Taylor and Abraham will end up losing the fight unless he can fix this problem.

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Kessler, 30, may be getting the toughest fight of the group 1 fighters in having to face 2004 Olympic Gold Medalist Andre Ward. Aside from a loss to Joe Calzaghe in 2007, Kessler has pretty much dominated the super middleweight division, albeit against mostly average opposition. Ward, however, is a huge step up from the likes of Dimitri Sartison, Anthony Mundine, Danilo Haussler, Markus Beyer, Eric Lucas and Librado Andrade.

Kessler is going to need to bring a much better game with him if he expects to beat a fighter like Ward, who does everything equally well. Ward can box from the outside, move well and has excellent power. To add to all that, he’s also capable of fighting extensive periods of time as a southpaw. He does everything well and is very hard to hit.