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Why would he be upset? Hence it being a tourney, it's about a series of fights, not just one.Comment
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Ward didn't get guaranteed homefield advantage for all of his fights at the start though. He got it for the Kessler fight, and the reason he'll probably have it in his next two fight is because he keeps winning.
If Taylor had beaten AA and Kessler had beaten Ward, then I expect their fight would've taken place outside of California.Comment
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Abraham-Dirrell: Will this be an easy fight for Andre?
February 17, 2010
By Scott Gilfoid: In looking over the stage 2 Super Six fight between Andre Dirrell (18-1, 13 KO’s) and former IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (31-1, 25 KO’s), I see it as one-sided a fight as you can imagine. Abraham, 29, is about as slow as Dirrell’s last opponent WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch in terms of hand speed, but doesn’t have the height or reach that the 6’1” Froch had going for him against Dirrell. Not that it helped Froch any, because he rarely landed any clean punches in the fight other than when he was in close to Dirrell.
Abraham, 5’10”, appears out of place amongst the much bigger Super Six contestants because of his limited height. You would think that Abraham’s speed would even the score and put him in the same class as the other fighters in the tourney, but Abraham has little hand speed going for him. Indeed, his punches, which I would describe as wide and ugly, are as slow as any I’ve seen.
What makes Abraham’s punches even slower is that he makes the mistake of throwing wide shots every time he throws a shot. He also has a really nasty habit of hooking his elbows as he throws a shot like he’s hitting a bag with both his punch and the elbow. If you look at Abraham’s fight with Jermain Taylor on October 17th last year, Abraham hurt Taylor by first hitting him with the right hand and then following through with his elbow that slammed into the side of Taylor’s face, staggering him.
It was a clever punch, although not exactly the fairest considering Abraham hurt Taylor with an elbow. It’s debatable whether the damage was done form the right hand or the elbow, but I’m inclined to see it as coming from the elbow because Taylor staggered immediately after getting hooked with it. Dirrell, 27, isn’t going to be standing directly in front of the slow-footed Abraham.
He knows that for Abraham to have any chance in this fight, he has to have the much faster handed Dirrell right there for him to land his slower shots. Dirrell, on the other hand, will be tattooing Abraham with punches from a distance, putting together incredible combinations that will be hard to see with the naked eye. Abraham won’t know how to combat Dirrell’s blazing hand speed.
This isn’t something you can exactly train for. If you have no hand speed and your feet are just as slow, it’s just not going to happen for Abraham. That’s like taking a simple fighter and then putting him in with a world class fighter and then expecting them to be competitive after having him train for eight week against a few hapless sparring partners.
It doesn’t matter who they dig up for Abraham to spar with in training camp, it won’t give Abraham fast twitch nerve fiber for his arms, shoulders and legs. The dude moves and punches like he has a lot of dead nerve fibers if you ask me. He never was very quick to begin with, but in the few years, Abraham has started to look even slower.
That’s bad news for Abraham, because speed is what he’s going to need most of all when he enters the ring against the talented Dirrell. I see this fight as Custer’s land stand for Abraham. Dirrell is going to encircle Abe, pick him off with arrow shots to the head, and then as he wears out in the later rounds, Dirrell will come in and lance the weary and shaken Abraham to the head with a powerful left hand to finish him off.Comment
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In that case how would Dirrell, a guy coming off 2 losses including a brutal KO, be a big win for Andre? After all Dirrell has beaten absolutely nobody in his career. The Taylor fight I understand, but if Dirrell withdraws I can see Ward actually getting a tougher opponent than Dirrell would have been in the 3rd round.Comment
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