by David P. Greisman (photo by John Booz/FightWireImages.com)

Moment No. 1: It is late in the fight. Arthur Abraham lands a right hand, knocking his opponent, an American who earned bronze at the Olympics, into unconsciousness.

Moment No. 2: It is late in the fight. Arthur Abraham lands a right hand, knocking his opponent, an American who earned bronze at the Olympics, into unconsciousness.

A knockout lasts somewhere between 10 seconds and the time at which consciousness is regained. The consequences depend on the circumstances.

Moment No. 1 gave Arthur Abraham a win over Jermain Taylor, installing Abraham atop the standings of the “Super Six” super middleweight tournament and making him an early favorite to win it all. It sent Taylor out of the competition and sent a message to the rest of the contestants: Abraham carried his one-punch power up to 168, and he holds onto it late.

Moment No. 2 gave Abraham a disqualification loss to Andre Dirrell, the first blemish on his ledger. Dirrell had slipped on a wet spot in a corner of the ring and was on his knees when Abraham slugged him. Dirrell was winning the fight, but Abraham was staging a late comeback. The foul removed any uncertainty as to what would happen in the bout: Dirrell was the winner. Meanwhile, the foul added uncertainty to the tournament, which is suddenly wide open.

There are two trains of thought when it comes to tournaments: Chalk – the clear favorites winning – is predictable and unexciting but serves to establish a clear, dominant champion. Cinderella – the underdogs shaking things up – is dramatic and entertaining and, yes, it can still establish a clear, dominant champion.

Look at this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. The Final Four includes a No. 1 seed, a No. 2 seed, and two No. 5 seeds. Rankings are based partially on past performance, partially on subjectivity. Wins and losses happen not just because of skill and ability, but due to style match-ups, too, and how good a team is on that particular day, at that particular point in the season.

That is why the true test of the tournament is consistency and longevity. Win pretty, win ugly, just win, baby, and keep winning until the winning is done.

The beauty of the Super Six tournament, however, is there is no “One and Done.” With a round-robin format for the first three fights (the “Group Stage”) before the semifinals and finals, a fighter can fall victim to a bad style match-up in one bout and come out victorious in the next. There is no such thing as being set up for success or failure. Each boxer controls his fate.

The Super Six began with one fighter favored to win it all: Mikkel Kessler. But Andre Ward upset Kessler, beating him handily and launching himself into the second round of the Group Stage alongside Abraham as one of two fighters favored to win the tournament.

Abraham-Dirrell was the first bout of this second round. The other two are still to come – Kessler vs. Carl Froch will take place April 24, and Andre Ward vs. Allan Green (who replaced Jermain Taylor) is scheduled for June 19. Fighters get two points for a win, an extra point for a knockout, and one point for a draw.

With two fights down, Abraham has three points and Dirrell has two points. Of the fighters yet to have their second bouts, Froch has two points, Ward has two points, and Kessler and Green have none.

Every favorite has a flaw.

There is now a blueprint for beating Abraham. Dirrell was active against a defensive fighter, using good movement, good hand speed and good counterpunching to keep away from Abraham’s retaliatory flurries. While Abraham was coming back late and had hurt Dirrell, the punch that got him disqualified means we will never know whether Abraham could have pulled it off or if his efforts came too late.

Dirrell, meanwhile, is an inconsistent enigma. In his first-round fight with Froch, he was stylistically unbearable, more intent on dodging punishment than on dishing it out. But with Abraham, he showed the sort of skills and athleticism that can give anyone in the tournament trouble.

The question is how he will fare after Abraham’s foul, the repercussions of his concussion. In the moments after he regained consciousness, Dirrell was unable to grasp that he had won the fight. He now knows he was the victor. He must, then, take confidence from why he was winning instead of questioning himself over how he actually won.

While training for his fight with Green, Andre Ward reinjured his right knee, which he had surgery on last year. Athletes’ bodies are both fine-tuned and fickle. They can return from injury better than ever. Or they can struggle to regain their form ever again. After his victory over Kessler, we had learned what Ward was capable of doing. After this injury, we need to see again what Ward can do.

Green has long considered himself one of the best at super middleweight, and he has shown enough to vie for contention. Yes, he has yet to beat a top 168-pounder. But one could’ve said the same thing about Ward before Ward beat Kessler and about Dirrell before Dirrell beat Abraham.

Kessler was the default king of the division after Joe Calzaghe abdicated his throne. But his three wins following his 2007 loss to Calzaghe came against lesser competition. Ward saw Kessler as a fighter with a predictable offense, a hunter who didn’t know how to fire at a moving target. Fortunately for Kessler, his second-round opponent is Froch, the kind of target that only moves in one direction: forward. Can Kessler rebound with a better stylistic pairing? Or have Kessler’s best days passed?

Froch is a plodder of a power puncher. And yet he is undefeated. He got an ugly split decision win over Dirrell in the one bout that was a bad style match-up for him. Now he has Kessler, who, as noted, will be both a blessing and a challenge to him, followed by Abraham. Froch has shown that he can take punishment. But fighters who take a lot of punishment ultimately reach a point where the armor begins to weaken.

The difference between Moment No. 1 and Moment No. 2 for Arthur Abraham was one of winning and losing. For the eventual winner of the Super Six tournament, the key will be to have one winning moment, and then another, making the moments into momentum, taking off from this great wide open and then closing the show.

The 10 Count

1.  So much has already been said about the clustermess out of Las Vegas this weekend, in which Joan Guzman came in for his lightweight title bout with Ali Funeka an astonishing nine pounds over the weight limit.

Rather than rehash what’s been said, here’s some facts and opinion:

Guzman has had four bouts slated for the lightweight division: against Nate Campbell in September 2008, what was supposed to be Guzman’s lightweight debut but ended up canceled; against Ameth Diaz three months later; against Ali Funeka this past November; and against Funeka in their rematch this past Saturday.

Guzman failed to make weight against Campbell, somehow was able to make 135 for Diaz and the first Funeka fight, and then failed to make weight (by a mile) for the Funeka rematch. That’s a 50 percent failure rate. It’s either intentional and gaming of the system, or it’s pitiful and a sign that Guzman long ago outgrew the division.

Funeka, meanwhile, has had three straight bouts with controversy: a very close loss to Nate Campbell in February 2009 in which Campbell failed to make the lightweight limit; a majority draw this past November with Guzman, a bout that everyone but two judges saw for Funeka; and Saturday’s rematch with the very over-the-limit Guzman.

Let’s hope that what Gary Shaw told BoxingScene’s Rick Reeno is true, that HBO Sports executive Kery Davis said that if Funeka lost, HBO wouldn’t hold the loss against him.

Poor Ali. This string of bad luck is taking the “Fun” out of “Funeka.”

2.  “I’m going to move up to 140 and I’ll fight anyone,” Guzman said after the fight, according to whoever does the Twitter feed for Golden Boy Promotions.

Uh, Joan… you didn’t even make 140 for Funeka.

3.  Let’s get this straight:

After Guzman failed to make weight, the IBF wouldn’t guarantee that Ali Funeka, should he lose to Guzman, would still be ranked as the sanctioning body’s No. 1 contender.

But…

The IBF let Zab Judah keep its welterweight title after Judah lost to Carlos Baldomir (and Baldomir didn’t pay sanctioning fees).

Of course it makes no sense. Then again, if anything the sanctioning bodies did started making sense to me, I’d rush myself to a therapist.

4.  So, Erik Morales, last seen at lightweight, takes a 12-round decision over Jose Alfaro, also last seen at lightweight. Somehow, Morales over Alfaro earned “El Terrible” something called the “WBC International welterweight title.”

Let me guess: Morales will face another blown-up former lightweight in his first defense – Joan Guzman.

As the Guinness guys would say: “Brilliant!”

5.  Tweet of the Week: “Margarito to come back for first fight since suspension. No truth to rumor he’ll be forced to fight bare handed.”

- @timdahlberg, Tim Dahlberg, the Associated Press columnist and longtime boxing writer.

Antonio Margarito’s return will be May 8 in Mexico on an independent Top Rank pay-per-view. Margarito will fight at junior middleweight against a 28-2 (21 knockouts, 1 no contest) fighter named Roberto Garcia.

Not sure how many will watch. HBO is airing a fight that night between Paul Williams and Kermit Cintron, plus the replay of the prior week’s Mosley-Mayweather match. Then again, at least a few people apparently bought Erik Morales’ pay-per-view bout this past Saturday, even though there was a Showtime card, an HBO card and a UFC pay-per-view on that night.

6.  There were too many boxers behaving badly this week to fit them in here, especially with all the other news worth noting. So if you need your fix of pugs in cuffs, click here for an edition of “The 10 (More) Count.”

7.  How to take the news that the Manny Pacquiao-Joshua Clottey pay-per-view did 700,000 buys in the United States?

I fall somewhere between Dan Rafael of ESPN.com and Tim Starks of queensberry-rules.com.

Rafael noted that 700,000 was a very good figure, especially considering that Pacquiao was the lone draw in a bout pitting two non-Americans against each other. The bout only had about two months for marketing, and there was no HBO “24-7” series, Rafael wrote.

Starks argued that the numbers weren’t bad, but weren’t great either. “By Pacquiao standards, and by boxing’s recent standards, I think it’s a bit of a letdown,” Starks wrote. “It’s the lowest figure of Pacquiao’s four most recent fights.” Starks noted factors contributing to the buy rate and conclusions that could be drawn from the buy rate. I’ll hold off on repeating everything in this space.

8.  That said, I agree most with this from Starks: “Surely, the letdown of Pacquiao-Clottey replacing Mayweather-Pacquiao affected the buy rate.”

De La Hoya-Pacquiao was a must-see pairing that benefited from De La Hoya’s star power. Hatton-Pacquiao was the biggest fight of 2009 until, well, Cotto-Pacquiao. When it comes to getting the casual fans to buy a pay-per-view in addition to those hardcore fans who are already buying it, there needs to be this selling point: “You have GOT to see this.” Pacquiao-Clottey didn’t have that same appeal, especially after all the talk of Pacquiao-Mayweather.

There are merits to both sides of the argument. As Starks noted, Floyd Mayweather Jr. did more with Juan Manuel Marquez in what was expected to be far more one-sided than the predictions for Pacquiao-Clottey. But 700,000 seems right to me for Pacquiao-Clottey, and, not including Hatton-Pacquiao and Cotto-Pacquiao, it is a better number than every pay-per-view we’ve had in recent years not involving De La Hoya or Mayweather.

9.  How in the world did I forget last week to note Joshua Clottey’s excuse for his one-sided loss to Manny Pacquiao?

In case you missed it, Clottey blamed Banku and Okro stew for giving him an upset stomach and diarrhea before the fight, according to Ghanaian news site Myjoyonline.com.

“When I ate after the weigh-in, I was ‘running,’ ” Clottey said in an interview. “The [sic] midnight I went to toilet almost like four times. In the morning, I went to toilet almost like three times. When we went to the dressing room I went to toilet almost like three times.”

The result, Clottey said, was his body felt weak and he had to push himself.

I’d say Clottey is full of it, but, well…

10.  Whatever the reason, the result of the fight showed that Pacquiao is clearly No. 1 and Clottey is clearly No. 2.

After that kind of performance, Clottey will be lucky if his next fight is aired on ESPN2 – you know, “The Deuce.”

Ah, nothing says “Award-winning boxing writer” like scatological humor…

David P. Greisman is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. His weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. He may be reached for questions and comments at fightingwords1@gmail.com