Andre Dirrell - very underrated

Andre Dirrell is kinda boring in some ways, true. It's doubtful that any reasonable excuses are causing his extremely long periods of inactivity. And maybe he faked that injury against Arthur Abraham, maybe he didn't, to me it looked legit enough, but I of course understand the doubters. But to be honest, I don't really care if Dirrell faked or not.

The point I wanna lead on to is, that Dirrell is very very underrated skillwise, which is caused by a loss of interest in him due to his own seemingly dead interest in making progress. Let's see what he has achieved, looking at his 3 most notable "statements" in the ring.

- 1) In 2008, he defeated Anthony Hanshaw by TKO5. Anthony Hanshaw is not a great boxer, but he is indeed a good boxer, with a win against Kingsley Ikeke and only one loss against Roy Jones Jr. by decision. Dirrell was the first and so far only guy to stop Anthony Hanshaw. Not a great achievement, but definetely a good achievement in the sense that it proves that Dirrell is a good jump above the average boxers.

- 2) No one here is a bigger fan of Carl Froch than I am, he's awesome and one of the most entertaining boxers to watch, however, only a fool would deny that Dirrell was robbed in the match against Froch in 2009 and that Froch should have some points deducted for his many rough tactics. Dirrell did fight with a boring style, but he did dominate and should have been given the decision. Carl Froch is a great boxer, with wins against Pascal, Taylor, Bute, Kessler, Arthur, etc., and being able to outbox him is quite a feat, showing how skilled Dirrell is.

- 3) In 2010, Dirrell fought Arthur Abraham. Dirrell outboxed Arthur Abraham during the match until Arthur hit him while he was down on his knees (due to slipping) in the 11th round, causing Dirrell to have a blackout. Some argue that Dirrell faked it, but if he did or not doesn't really matter, look at how he had managed to outbox Arthur Abraham. Some say that Arthur Abraham is nothing special at SMW, and truth be told, he's not the greatest there, but he is definetely one of them and his resume proves it. He had KO'ed Jermain Taylor and would later win points decisions against good-but-not-great boxer Piotr Wilczewski and stop an okay Mehdi Bouadla in the 8th round to cuts. He also won a points decision against Robert Stieglitz, a pretty good SMW boxer. The point is, that it was quite a feat for Dirrell to outbox Arthur for 11 rounds.

As we can see from the above 3 achievements, Dirrell has definetely made a statement of his immense talent, and while the rest of his opposition weren't anything special, he did beat all of them, most by KO/TKO. However, he's underrated due to the statement he made being an unclear statement. Hanshaw is unknown, Froch got the decision even though he was outboxed and Arthur lost by disqualification. While Dirrell proved himself a great boxer in these circumstances, none of them managed to convince the public that he was anything special. Something was always wrong with his statement of talent...

And who is to blame for that? Dirrell himself, due to his lame inactivity, which makes him appear weakhearted and tired of the sport and forgetable. But his talent is underrated. I truly think that Dirrell could be number 1 or number 2 in the SMW division when he's at his very best, but with his immense inactivity, will he then ever reach his best again? Only God knows the answer to that question.

 

Does anyone agree with me that Dirrell could have posed a great risk to Andre Ward and possibly even beat him? I think Dirrell's chances against Ward would be bigger than the chances of all other possible competitors at the moment. Adonis Stevenson could be a possible danger for Ward too, though, if that fight would ever get made (which is unlikely).

 

It would be interesting to see which victories Dirrell could obtain if he made a return to quality (and active) boxing. I hope he does. He's proven to contain some very great skills in the ring and I would love to see how some of the top fighters would try to fight him. Especially Ward.

 

Do you agree that he could possibly have been number 1 or 2 at SMW? Even if you understandably dislikes him?

 

I fear that you may be right. Seems likely.

 

Dunno, maybe he doesn't really want to box anymore, but it's sad, he's very very good at it.

 

It was indeed a robbery, otherwise, I would like to hear your round-for-round scoring? I personally like Froch a lot more than I like Dirrell and I hope Froch would be able to beat Dirrell in a rematch, but I love this sport and I love it for what it is, which is why I choose to remain realistic and neutral when makng my opinions - and it's obvious that Dirrell won, seriously.

That Dirrell is irrelevant is possibly true, to some extent.

 

I'm actually not so sure about that, possibly UD him, but we really can't know, Dirrell seems to not be too far behind Ward when it comes to skills.