If I'm Andre Ward....I would be very pi$$ed off at Arthur Abraham

[Clegg]

One thing I was thinking...if Kessler beats Froch (which he's favoured to do by most people) then all 3 of AA's first round opponents will have been coming off of a loss.

If Dirrell wins (or gets replaced by Bika) then all 3 of Ward's first round opponents will be coming off of a win.

That's not all that matters, obviously, but I do find it kinda interesting.

[Earl-Hickey]

Yeah, i agree. Im not sure Direll wakes up in time to fight Ward.

[mathed]

http://www.b---------24.com/2010/02/...ght-for-andre/

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.

I dunno about this assessment totally. I agree with Abraham being much slower than Dirrell and that he doesn't have the height in his favor. As for him being outclassed because of the speed, I can't agree here. In his last fight before the tourney began, against Oral, he showed that he can handle speedy fighters. Oral was much faster and was darting in and out tagging Abraham with shots but Abraham caught up with him and worked the body, eventually slowing him down and then crushing him with those hooks.

Abraham adjusts slowly around the 4th or 5th rds to rally down the stretch. I see Dirrell winning the early rds but Abraham WILL catch Dirrell and I don't think that Dirrell can take more than a few of those shots before he falls down. Abraham's defense will aggravate Dirrell, making him more aggressive which will bring him on the inside- for the easy kill

[Sweet Jesus]

is that why JT had to go to Germany?

Abraham is way bigger in Germany than Taylor was in America even when he was undisputed MW champ.