The minute Andre Dirrell was cold-cocked and Arthur Abraham was disqualified, as I watched Saturday?s West Coast, three-hours-old Showtime transmission of the bout, I ran to the computer to find out whether Dirrell was dead.
But it seems the consensus is that he was merely playing dead. I am appalled.
A boxer who is upright in a stance cannot POSSIBLY be hit as hard Abraham hit Dirrell after the latter had slipped to one knee on a slick patch of canvas in the 11th round of their Super Six tournament bout.
Rocky, of course, got hit that hard every punch, but let?s be clear: Abraham is one of the most feared knockout artists in boxing, and he has never landed a cleaner punch, if by clean you mean unfettered.
He knocked Dirrell senseless all right, and if you view the incident at actual speed, you see that Dirrell went down immediately.
Watching replays in slow motion, some critics of what went down are claiming Dirrell gave matters a second or two of thought before deciding the better part of valor was discretion. Dirrell actually recites those Shakespearean words in some versions of the incident.
Yes, Dirrell is being accused, widely accused, of taking a dive to ensure the disqualification rather than taking his chances on lasting the final five minutes of a fight he would win by merely remaining upright.
That makes about as much sense as leaving America for a few days to have your baby in Kenya.
What would have been Dirrell?s motive for acting? Why would a boxer, who is dependent on his own box-office appeal, calculatingly squander his image doing that?
Dirrell totally dominated the fight for nine rounds, creating problems Abraham had never faced before, including a fourth-round knockdown. In the 10th, Abraham actually did land a telling blow, and it should have counted as a knockdown. Dirrell retreated the remainder of the round and looked a bit spooked between rounds. But during the 11th, the fight regained its ninth-round character, with Dirrell throwing more punches than Abraham but becoming ever more careful not to mix it up anymore.
You can make a case for the likelihood Abraham would have caught him, but you can make at least as strong a case for Dirrell?s chances of lasting 12.
You can?t vilify Abraham too much for any of this. He didn?t have much time to decide whether he was entitled to take advantage of the opening provided when Dirrell slipped on a wet spot. Do note, however, that the wet spot was in Abraham?s corner, right where Dirrell also had slipped in the seventh round.
Abraham is the one person entitled to be deranged enough to suggest Dirrell was merely acting. The rest of you, especially those whose metaphors tend to run toward disparagement of a certain female body part, should be ashamed.
