Random thoughts about last night

Rather than post in the 100 threads already out there, I figured I'd sum my thoughts up on both Abraham-Taylor and Dirrell-Froch in one place.

1) I severely underrated Abraham at 168 and was shocked at his upper body movement. He fought a smart, typical Abraham fight in many aspects, but he looked fresh enough to go 20 rounds last night. Most surprising to me was the lack of respect he was giving Taylor in the second half of the fight- I never thought I'd see Abraham dropping his hands that often, utilizing upper body movement to evade punches (and succeeding at it) when the turtle shell was essentially impregnable last night. He didn't have to do that to win, but it was telling of how gunshy Jermain was that even when Abraham had his hands at his hips, Jermain didn't want to throw at him. There wasn't a fight venue at the world that Abraham wouldn't have defeated Taylor last night at. I don't see Abraham missing the semifinals with how he looked last night.

2) I almost need a new television because I was on the verge of throwing something through it watching Froch-Dirrell. I had Dirrell winning narrowly, but I'm not here to throw a ***** fit about how it ruined the super six (it didn't). This is coming from someone who's been picking Dirrell by decision for awhile,and I'll admit I was rooting for him to win this one. That doesn't eliminate my criticism of his performance though, and here it is:

What infuriates me is that Dirrell should've won 10 rounds last night, but mixed in his fits of brilliance with some of the stupidest boxing I've ever witnessed. He should've known just dodging punches shouldn't have been enough, but yet he didn't counter three quarters of the time he made Froch miss. He should've used the left hook more.

The worst aspect is that he never adapted his fight plan to the ref he was fighting for. Something goes wrong? Dirrell looks at the ref, all the while Froch's punching him. He jumped in (with no punches, mind you), and laid on Froch without throwing anything, all the while Froch's doing all the work in the inside. He gets mad at the ref for this, but the bottom line is he needs to realize the way the ref's calling he fight and alter his strategy (which was a dumb component of his fight plan anyways). This frustrated the hell out of me because Froch had minimal offense that Dirrell didn't hand him on a silver platter in that manner- had he kept it in the outside, Dirrell could've won this going away. Part of that has to go back to conditioning- watch the fight film, and what happens shortly after Andre stunned him late with that left hook? He flops right in on Froch, doing the exact same thing that was getting him nowhere. He was tiring in the middle rounds of the fight despite not throwing much, and still backs straight up, utilizing all foot movement and only a small amount of upper body movement- that uses more energy. Maddening.

I hope Andre takes it as a learning experience, because there is alot of good that can come out of a loss like that. The sun's not set on him, and people need to remember there's 2 more fights for him to develop and make up for that loss. I believe he's going to.

3) As for Froch- he's still Froch, a tough, conditioned, gutsy brawler who's there to be outboxed. When Dirrell fought smart, he was getting outboxed, and I believe he's going to be in his next two fights. Kessler's going to do to him what he did to Andrade, and I think Abraham knocks him out. That said, I was accurate in describing Froch as "truth serum" because he shows you alot about who he's fighting. This was on display in spades for the Dirrell fight, where he showed his propensity to get outboxed, but we all still got to bear witness to the current shortcomings in Dirrell's game in the process.

Overall, it was an ugly, ugly fight. I'm disappointed Dirrell didn't get the win, but I can't say he did himself many favors; fortunately, alot of those mistakes can be fixed with experience.