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Dirrell won the fight. Anyone who thinks he didn't must not know much about boxing.
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No matter what the judges were to say after the main event at the Trent FM Arena in Nottingham, England on Saturday night between Carl Froch and Andre Dirrell, the underdog American from Michigan would have emerged as a winner. Dirrell fought as he promised he would, hard and strong, and he surpassed the expectations of most experts, who suspected that his thin resume would do him no favors against the rugged super middleweight champion Froch. His hand speed, his movement, his unorthodoxy gave Froch fits, and the fans in attendance were chewing their nails as the judges' cards were tallied.Originally posted by slimshandy69 View Post
The scores tumbled forth from Jimmy Lennon Jr: a split decision: Alejandro Rochin saw it 114-113 Dirrell, Massimo Barrovecchio scored it 115-112 Froch and the tiebreaker from Daniel Van de Wiele was 115-112, for Froch. And while Dirrell bowed his head, looking a bit deflated, TSS had to hope he exulted afterwards, because his effort was exemplary, and our card echoed Rochin's 114-113 Dirrell judgment."
http://www.thesweetscience.com/boxin...plit-decision/
"Andre Dirrell took it to Carl Froch from bell to bell, winning 10 rounds on my scorecard and by a score of 117-110 on Scott Christ's card. Froch looked completely outclassed for most of the fight, resorting at various points to throwing Andre to the ground, holding and hitting, hitting after the bell, hitting on the break, headlocks, and elbows. However, despite all of this referee Hector Afu saw fit to never deduct a point from Froch but instead to deduct from Dirrell for excessive holding. After the final bell the fact that the fight was being contested in Froch's home country of England sat in the back of my mind as heavy as Gary Shaw after a trip to the all-you-can-eat buffet. The official scores were read and it was Froch whose hand was raised after a split decision.
Scott Christ expands at BadLeftHook:
It was an odd fight to watch or describe, as it was dirtier than all hell, with a referee that could not keep control of the fight. I truly, truly feel Dirrell won the fight, and rather dominantly so. Froch rambled after the fight about Dirrell not being a warrior and standing and fight, but Dirrell landed much better shots than he did, and frankly made him look like a second-rate fighter. Dirrell showed his entire range of skills, and though Andre was not clear of any wrongdoing tonight (he held a lot, and sometimes blatantly so), he was far less dirty out there than Froch."
http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2009/10/1...nt-ruined-carl
Nice try thoughComment
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The perhaps most respected writer of them all had Froch winning:Originally posted by mathed View Post
http://www.fightwriter.com/?q=node/2425Comment
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That is the kind of fight that is very heavily influence by emotions and feelings on the night. A fight like that can only be scored truly objectively a few weeks later when everyone has calmed down a bit.
However, on fight night, with 8,000 screaming fans, Froch coming forward landing big shots like when he chased Dirrell across the ring (and the the leaping left hook that had Dirrell on queer street), coupling this with Dirrell's running and potshotting which only truly hurt Froch once - it is very very easy to see how 2/3 judges gave Froch the decision.Comment
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Originally posted by slimshandy69 View Post
Showtime did not have Froch winning. Bernstein had Dirrell by a point and Gus clearly had Dirrell winning.
Thaxton & Rawling both had Dirrell wining, Bunce's opinion is about as valid as yours, its extremely biased, he did not even have to tell me who he scored the fight for it would of been the Brit by default, that is how objective he is
So basically your making up as you go along.Comment
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great find...froch won hands down..Originally posted by BattlingNelson View Post
heres the article in full to make the froch haters seeth...
There have been far worse decisions than the one that saw Carl Froch hang on to his WBC super middleweight title with a split decision win over Andre Dirrell in the second of the “Super Six” tournament’s first-stage bouts on Saturday night. Earlier in the evening, Arthur Abraham left no room for doubt with a dominant performance ending in a spectacular last-seconds knockout win over Jermain Taylor in Berlin.
I was in the minority in picking a Dirrell upset win and I know I am in the minority again when I offer the opinion that Froch did enough to scrape home on points.
If this was a boxing match scored by the electronic system used in the Olympics, I have no doubt that Dirrell would have got the verdict. He almost certainly landed more clean punches on target than did Froch.
OK, so why wasn’t it Dirrell getting his arm raised at the end of the bout?
This is where it gets a bit tricky.
There were several rounds, as I saw it, that were open to doubt. That is, a judge could have scored these rounds in either boxer’s favour and not necessarily been wrong.
Dirrell was just as fast as anticipated. The young man from Flint, MI, was clever and intelligent and he showed some grit when rallying in the last three rounds — rounds that one would have expected the more experienced Froch to be dominating. The 10th and 11th were, I thought, Dirrell’s two strongest rounds, with the harsh deduction of a point seeming to spur him on rather than disheartening him.
Unfortunately, Dirrell was his own worst enemy. There were flashes of evasive brilliance, but at other times Dirrell seemed to be in full flight, reminding me a bit of Oscar De La Hoya’s backpedalling down the stretch that cost him the decision against Felix Trinidad. At other times Dirrell would almost jump into clinches, and he complained to the referee a little too often about being roughed up. (What happened to the days when fighters would fight and leave the refereeing to the referee?)
All of the above was surely giving the judges a negative impression of Dirrell’s performance. This impression would no doubt have been reinforced by the frequent cautions that referee Hector Afu, of Panama, issued to Dirrell for holding Froch or leaning on him in the clinches.
Then we come to Froch. The British fighter looked crude at times, and he threw some wild misses, but he was pressing ahead constantly and he gave the impression that, at all times, he wanted to fight. Dirrell, meanwhile, was presenting an image — for much of the fight — of a boxer who was trying to avoid contact, spoil, and steal rounds.
Froch was fighting like the man who was in command of the fight. Professional judges take note of that.
I’m thinking back to the famous heavyweight fight between Muhammad Ali and Jimmy Young in 1976. The unanimous decision in Ali’s favour was roundly criticised, as I recall. Young seemed, in the opinion of the crowd and most of the American TV viewers, to have outscored Ali. Everyone agrees that Ali looked dreadful in that fight but Young was excessively cautious in most of the early rounds and on several occasions — perhaps as many as six times — ducked his head through the ropes to avoid punches.
I think that in this fight it wasn’t so much that the judges were giving the rounds to Ali as not giving the rounds to Young.
This is what I think happened in the Froch-Dirrell fight. I suspect that there were several rounds where the two judges who had Froch winning felt that they couldn’t bring themselves to give rounds to a challenger who had been unassertive. No, this has nothing to do with the fallacy that a challenger has to beat a champion clearly to win the title: when two boxers are in the ring it is just a matter of the judges deciding which of them won or lost each round. A judge does not sit down to score a fight thinking that the champion has a built-in advantage simply because he holds the title — you’ll have to trust me on this.
Dirrell would most likely have won the decision had he fought a couple more rounds the way he did the 10th and 11th, but some credit has to be given to Froch for forcing the challenger to box cautiously — there was a reason why the American boxer didn’t want to take chances.
I did think that the referee was extremely harsh in taking the point from Dirrell for leaning on Froch. There were infringements on both sides here. Froch was manhandling Dirrell, hitting him behind the head and on the break, and he surely should have had a point taken for tossing Dirrell to the floor, just as Marco Antonio Barrera was docked a point for running Naseem Hamed’s head into the ring-post cushion in Las Vegas, or as Hamed was penalised for body-slamming Cesar Soto to the canvas in Detroit — Dirrell could have suffered an injury when he was thrown over, and then we would have been looking at big-fight fiasco. The ref seemed, to me, to be favouring Froch.
Maybe the Nottingham crowd had some effect on the way the fight was judged, with roars even when the hometown favourite was missing with his big hooks and right hands, but this is why home advantage can be crucial in a close fight. The American camp knew this going in. The challenger’s trainer and grandfather Leon Lawson got it right when he told Dirrell to go for the stoppage in the 12th: “We ain’t getting a decision here.”
If the fight had been in, say, Las Vegas, or the Mohegan Sun, or another U.S.venue, Dirrell might well have left the ring as the new champion. Froch got the breaks on Saturday, Dirrell didn’t. As American real-estate agents impress upon their clients: “Location, location, location.”
In the Showtime coverage, which was my vehicle for viewing the fight, analyst Al Bernstein had Dirrell edging it but didn’t seem too sure. In the British broadcast, commentator John Rawling of the new PPV platform Primetime had Dirrell winning (I know this because he sent me an email to this effect after the fight), while I’m told that ex-fighter analyst Jon Thaxton also scored it for Dirrell while pundit Steve Bunce went for Froch.
That’s the sort of fight it was — open to interpretationComment
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Doesn't matter what anybody else's opinion of the fight is, was, blah, blah, blah....the judges had Froch ahead on the cards, and since their opinions are the only ones that truly make a ****ting bit of difference, Froch came away with the victory. And to put it simply, it was Dirrell's fight to win or lose. I had him ahead by a point (after the deduction) but can easily see the judges going with Froch, simply because of the way Dirrell fought scared throughout so much of the fight. A confident boxer doesn't end up on his ass so much without getting hit over a 12 round fight. Nor does he hold as much as Andre did, or end up with his head in his opponent's crotch as much as he did.
I agree that Dirrell was the better boxer, more skilled and talented than Froch by far, but he came in with the intention of doing "just enough" to take home a decision, instead of the intent to tear away Froch's belt by force of will, and that **** (usually) never turns out well for the challenger. Had he been the belt holder, the judges might've given him some leeway, but being the challenger, it was his duty to do his damnedest to dominate Froch through the majority of the fight, rather than just in spots during most rounds. And the crying shame of it is that Andre could've knocked Froch out, had he fought the fight he should've. He had him hurt once, and could've done the same at least at one or two points during every single round...he was just too lacking in confidence to capitalize on his speed and skill, and take Carl out. And for that, I have not even the tiniest bit of sympathy. He blew that all on his own.
Anyway, like I said...I had Dirrell ahead, but knew full well how it was going to go before the decision was read, and wasn't surprised, or even disappointed, by the judges take on the fight. They had every right to penalize him for holding back so much of himself, and fighting a more timid, safe fight than he needed to.
Hopefully, this'll be a learning experience for Andre, and the next time he's challenging for a belt, he'll fight more like he believes he can beat his opponent.Comment
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good post but i was there live and scored froch 6 rounds up as i saw the swet fly off dirrells face every time froch jabvbed him and hnce why after 4ound 4 dirrell had a bloodied nose and lips...Originally posted by Stickman View Post
On tv it looks alot closer though..but even then i have froch 3 rounds up...dirrells best round and most/only meanigful shot was round 10, and guess what, he got a poimnt rightfully deducted...
As for dirrell being more talneted, practically every fighter froch faces appears to be more talneted than him yet hes 26 and 0...
The americans and calzaghe bum boys better be praying kessler sparks frch out early...Comment
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good post but i was there live and scored froch 6 rounds up as i saw the swet fly off dirrells face every time froch jabvbed him and hnce why after 4ound 4 dirrell had a bloodied nose and lips...Originally posted by Stickman View Post
On tv it looks alot closer though..but even then i have froch 3 rounds up...dirrells best round and most/only meanigful shot was round 10, and guess what, he got a poimnt rightfully deducted...
As for dirrell being more talneted, practically every fighter froch faces appears to be more talneted than him yet hes 26 and 0...
The americans and calzaghe bum boys better be praying kessler sparks frch out early...Comment
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