Dan Rafael: Dirrell is an ugly, negative fighter

[whiskey]

http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/boxing ... id=4575349

cords: Froch, 26-0, 20 KOs; Dirrell, 18-1, 13 KOs

Rafael's remark: Froch isn't the smoothest or most skilled boxer, but he makes up for it with a physical, relentless style. It served him well when he outslugged Jean Pascal (who would go on to win a light heavyweight belt) to win a vacant super middleweight title in December. It served him well when he rallied to starch Jermain Taylor with 14 seconds left in the fight in his first defense in April. And it served him well again as he eked out a split decision against Flint, Mich., native and 2004 U.S. Olympic bronze medalist Dirrell to retain his title in a Group Stage 1 match of Showtime's Super Six World Boxing Classic six-man super middleweight tournament. Froch had the luxury of fighting in his hometown, but had to enter the ring in the wee hours of the morning to accommodate Showtime's live telecast to the East Coast of the United States while Dirrell had simply stayed on his normal body schedule for the fight.

Dirrell also fought in his normal negative, agonizing style. He ran, he cried to the referee about just about everything and he held. And grabbed. And wrestled. At times, it was like watching a smaller, faster, more skilled version of John Ruiz. It was ugly. When Dirrell, who has all the talent in the world but still fights like an amateur, would stand and fight, he landed some nice counter right hands. But he didn't do it nearly enough.

The first half of the fight was an abomination because of Dirrell's unwillingness to do anything but run and grab. All the while, Froch was making the fight, coming forward and firing in what degenerated into a somewhat dirty fight. But in the eighth round, Froch nailed Dirrell with a left hook late in the round that definitely rattled him. Both fighters fouled each other often with low blows, elbows, blows to the back of the head and punches on the break. Referee Hector Afu did his best, but had a very hard time maintaining control. Both guys could have had points deducted at various times but Afu did not pull the trigger until finally docking a point from Dirrell for holding and hitting in the 10th round, during which Dirrell hurt Froch with two hard left hands. In the end, two judges gave it to Froch, which was the right call. How can you give Dirrell the fight when, for the most part, he fought scared, complained to the referee about everything and barely threw any punches in the first half or two-thirds of the fight? He finished very strong, but it wasn't enough to warrant or deserve the decision. At best, he could have had a draw, which would have still not given him the title.

Froch, 32, picked up two points for the victory and will move on to face Mikkel Kessler in a Group Stage 2 bout to be scheduled for sometime around March. If Kessler defeats Andre Ward in their Group Stage 1 bout on Nov. 21, Kessler-Froch would be a title unification bout. Dirrell, who along with Ward is the most inexperienced fighter in the field, didn't hurt himself too badly with the loss. He gained valuable experience and showed he can compete with the top dogs in the division. But he needs to do more fighting and less running. He has a very tough Group Stage 2 bout. Arthur Abraham is supposed to come to the United States from Germany to face Dirrell, 26, in late January. That's a very, very tough fight.

[whiskey]

Graham Houston is a bit more on the money for me :-


http://www.fightwriter.com/?q=node/2422

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 interpretation.

[Phenomenal-Nutrition]

Do you agree with him giving Taylor every round in his fight with Froch too?

[gemmell]

i agree with the thing's he said.i thought dirrell deserved a draw tho.but not the win

[youngrell]

Quite a contradiction from Rafael considering he thought BHop beat Calzaghe using a very similar, run, hold, whinge to the ref spoil the fight style.

I admit Hopkins actually engaged a lot more than Dirrell did and caught Calzaghe with some very nice counters, however Calzaghe actually managed to lay a glove on BH outside of a clinch and punch to the back of the head, unlike Froch who had no idea of how to pin his man down.

As ugly, negative and boring as Dirrell was, there was no way Froch won more rounds than him, not even close. And Gomez I have to say 10 out of 10 for your efforts to shine a light on all the negatives regarding Dirrell's performance to try and justify Froch getting the W, I understand you're his mate so it's only natural but it's almost like you're trying to convince yourself.

[crusader]

Rafael also had Taylor beating Froch something like 108-100. I rarley see a fight the same way he does. I agree that Dirrell was negative, but the "At best it should have been a draw" is BS. Dirrell out boxed Froch.

[josh fg]

As I've said on other posts people thing Dirrell did well because he dictated the fight and it was his kind of fight. However Froch landed more significant blows, cutting and brusing Dirrell and judges score on effective aggression.

I would like to see the two of them have this fight again maybe later in the tourniment, perhaps with more expriance from Dirrell and on a better night for Froch and a reff who didn't put up with Dirrell ducking all over the place holding and bitching it'd be a better fight.

[crusader]

As I've said on other posts people thing Dirrell did well because he dictated the fight and it was his kind of fight. However Froch landed more significant blows, cutting and brusing Dirrell and judges score on effective aggression.

I would like to see the two of them have this fight again maybe later in the tourniment, perhaps with more expriance from Dirrell and on a better night for Froch and a reff who didn't put up with Dirrell ducking all over the place holding and bitching it'd be a better fight.

Cutting a guy doesnt mean you landed more significant blows. Some guys get cut by flicking jab, its just how the punch land and how tough a guys skin is. Dirrell landed the most significant punch of the fight in either the tenth or eleventh that had Froch hurt. I never really saw Froch connect with anything anyways. He through punches that would have been hurtful if they landed, but they didn't.

[WOODDDDDDDYA]

Does Dan expect a slick boxer like Dirrell just stand there and trade with Froch? Anyway journalists like Rafael, Bunce & Houston had it for Froch but fighters like Berto, Ward & Glen Johnson had it for Dirrell. Andre fought to his strengths and when they both engaged Andre hurt Carl. I think Froch will fight better in his next 2 fights, he will have to.

[whiskey]

Cutting a guy doesnt mean you landed more significant blows. Some guys get cut by flicking jab, its just how the punch land and how tough a guys skin is. Dirrell landed the most significant punch of the fight in either the tenth or eleventh that had Froch hurt. I never really saw Froch connect with anything anyways. He through punches that would have been hurtful if they landed, but they didn't.

So if ten jabs land and are met with a smile, meanwhile one clubbing shot bursts a guy's face does not make it more significant ?

Dirrell was bleeding from the mouth, nose and eye by the end of the fight.

Froch had no marks. I'd agree Froch was buzzed in the tenth. Perhaps in shock more than anything. But Dirrell legged it as soon as Froch fought back.

[jamesmcdonnell]

Graham Houston is a bit more on the money for me :-


http://www.fightwriter.com/?q=node/2422

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 interpretation.

Pretty much in agreement with everything there. I however think it's wrong for judges to penalise the fighter because they think he's being too negative, especially when his opponent does jack all.

[MightyWarrior]

I don't rate Dan Rafael, just a typical american view of giving the rounds for coming forward, even if you're not landing anything.
I do rate Houston though, the best of the best, and if GH gives it a draw, well ok maybe he's right. I just don't think Carl won that, and maybe Dirrell didn't either - have to say I thought he nicked it though, but not the worst we've ever seen, not by a long shot.

Be interesting to hear Bunce's "take", if Carl (somehow) wins in Denmark or Germany, but gets ripped off by the judges.

[Phenomenal-Nutrition]

Cutting a guy doesnt mean you landed more significant blows. Some guys get cut by flicking jab, its just how the punch land and how tough a guys skin is. Dirrell landed the most significant punch of the fight in either the tenth or eleventh that had Froch hurt. I never really saw Froch connect with anything anyways. He through punches that would have been hurtful if they landed, but they didn't.

So if ten jabs land and are met with a smile, meanwhile one clubbing shot bursts a guy's face does not make it more significant ?

Dirrell was bleeding from the mouth, nose and eye by the end of the fight.

Froch had no marks. I'd agree Froch was buzzed in the tenth. Perhaps in shock more than anything. But Dirrell legged it as soon as Froch fought back.

Accept for the fact Dirrells shots looked better than Frochs, cuts mean little

[Raff The Frenchman]

and Dan Rafael is an ugly fat negative boxing writer who's always full of sh!t

[whiskey]

Kevin Iole scored it for Froch too. Seems all the Americans are against Dirrell.

http://sports.yahoo.com/box/news?slug=k ... &type=lgns

After watching the Carl Froch-Andre Dirrell fight, I can see why many people believe boxing is a dying sport. This was completely pathetic. I watched it with my mom and I told her everything that would happen just like it did. In the first round Froch would become discouraged and start fighting rough. After all the illegal crap Froch threw, Dirrell would be docked, and last but not least that Froch would win on a split decision with, coincidentally, the two European judges giving him the win. Don’t get me wrong: I like rough fights and little boxing, but Dirrell clearly won this fight.
Jeremiah
Fort Meade, Md.

I had it 114-113 for Froch. I scored it six rounds apiece, but Froch got the win because of the deduction. I don’t think it was a travesty and I think Dirrell has no one to blame but himself. He didn’t punch nearly enough and held far too much.

[gemmell]

Cutting a guy doesnt mean you landed more significant blows. Some guys get cut by flicking jab, its just how the punch land and how tough a guys skin is. Dirrell landed the most significant punch of the fight in either the tenth or eleventh that had Froch hurt. I never really saw Froch connect with anything anyways. He through punches that would have been hurtful if they landed, but they didn't.

So if ten jabs land and are met with a smile, meanwhile one clubbing shot bursts a guy's face does not make it more significant ?

Dirrell was bleeding from the mouth, nose and eye by the end of the fight.

Froch had no marks. I'd agree Froch was buzzed in the tenth. Perhaps in shock more than anything. But Dirrell legged it as soon as Froch fought back.

yeh dirrell buzzed him but froch threw a couple punches back and dirrell sprant away from him like froch had an ak47 on him dirrell is a joke

[WOODDDDDDDYA]

Why are Froch's fans looking for every journalist on the planet who scored the fight for the Cobra? Carl's the champ, there's no need to defend him. I personally thought Dirrell won it by 3 or 4 rounds but thankfully for Carl the judges didn't see the fight the way I did.

[crusader]

Cutting a guy doesnt mean you landed more significant blows. Some guys get cut by flicking jab, its just how the punch land and how tough a guys skin is. Dirrell landed the most significant punch of the fight in either the tenth or eleventh that had Froch hurt. I never really saw Froch connect with anything anyways. He through punches that would have been hurtful if they landed, but they didn't.

So if ten jabs land and are met with a smile, meanwhile one clubbing shot bursts a guy's face does not make it more significant ?

Dirrell was bleeding from the mouth, nose and eye by the end of the fight.

Froch had no marks. I'd agree Froch was buzzed in the tenth. Perhaps in shock more than anything. But Dirrell legged it as soon as Froch fought back.

Froch did not land any of those clubbing shots you are talking about, uness you thought he was fighting the air. Even if he did Dirrell landed more, and had Froch hurt. And since when does smiling reduce the amount of points scored by the other fighter? That is a new one to me. The fact Dirrell was bleeding just a tad is just another scoring fallacy that is irrelevant to the judging of a fight. It in no way means that the fighter with a clear face landed the harder punches. Froch's rubber legs in round 11 are a testament to that.