I was really shocked and angry. I was sure that if the fight wnet the d, one card would go to Froch, but this was frankly ridiculous. It was a hair short of a crime.

Dan Rafael scored it for Froch as well. He had Froch up by one point, meaning that deduction against Dirrell was the difference maker.

I honestly don’t care about the tournament much at all now. I’ve been defending boxing so hard and for so long to the MMA crowd and saying “just wait for the super six…just wait for it…it’s going to be awesome” but instead it’s all the same old bullshit that caused people to float away from boxing to begin with. I still love the sport…but when these kind of unique and potentially sport changing events are tainted by the same old bullshit I have to stop defending it as hard as I have.

even with this decision it doesnt really affect the tourney as dirrell if he is so dominant he can beat his next opponents and still advance and get a rematch

Let me say one other thing: I really like Carl Froch as a fighter. He’s exciting, he’s aggressive, and he’s tougher than leather. But he lost this fight pretty clearly, IMO.

He’s got a post-fight chat going on and he’s getting a bit snippy with the folks who are saying Dirrell won the fight:

Wil (SC)

Dan, put your tv on mute, rewatch and rescore that fight.

Dan Rafael (10:47 PM)

You are entitled to your opinion, as am I. I had Froch winning by one point and I stand by it. I don’t need to (or want to) rewatch the fight. You go rewatch it and let me know how it turned out.

efrain (biola ca)

dirrell would beat him if they fight agian

Dan Rafael (10:49 PM)

If you had wings you’d be a bird. If, if, if… Whatever.

Dirrell won 8 to 4 minus 1. That’s how it went. Dirrell was coming into this fight 20 punches in the hole and it showed. It was a homebrew win, but not the one-sided robbery some guys are claiming.

I feel like Direll got taken out of his mental game by the dirty fighting of Froch. Direll trying to respond in kind to Froch’s roughhousing took a toll on the flow of the fight. TBH, I Direll over Froch 115 to 111, but holding Froch and getting hit in his clinch didn’t do Direll any favors.

Froch hit twice on the break, and threw a number of rabbit punches (without Direll holding him), and threw Direll to the floor. How many warnings do you get before the ref takes a point away?

Hit Froch in the balls then crush his nose with a headbutt and lose a DQ cause I smelled home cooking about 6 rounds out. I knew at that point he would lose any decision that wasn’t a shutout or knockout

While boxing is about exuding skill it’s also about actually fighting the other guy and Dirrell didn’t want to do it.

The picture shown of Dirrell looking like he’s about to punch hides the fact that he was away on his toes for most of the fight and ran for most of it.

He complained about getting hit on the back of the head but he was legitimately ducking face to the floor and doing all he could to avoid fighting, including constantly clinching to the point Froch threw him on the floor. Some may call it tactics but he was trying to stink the place out and steal a win, and to be honest that’s frowned upon in Europe and the UK big time.

Froch wasn’t happy about the win but said after that he didn’t feel like he’d had a fight and would be taking it out on his sparring partner on Monday (poor guy!).

Dirrell will have to show a lot more than he did to realistically win this tournament, he had flashes where he looked great but showed no aggression whatsoever and was virtually chased around the ring.

Are you seriously telling me those guys look like they had a fight, Carl hit Dirrell harder and chased him around the ring. Dirrell hit Carl more often but apart from a few half decent shots most were just for show.

The fight was not a fight. This was chess, Dirrell looked ok landing a couple of harder shot but couldn’t wait to run away or clinch and his tactics are considered a no no in Europe.

Froch was likely awarded punches in the clinch because Dirrell initiated the clinch and this is where he picked up points.

I think Dirrell has got a case but at the end of the day for all his talk he didn’t come to fight and was there to steal a win, it was an awfully boring fight to watch with the younger quicker guy only really throwing punches because it gave him an opening to run away.

To be honest I’m a bit split on the decision but at the end of the day I was talking to a mate while the fight was happening and we both agreed that Dirrell was trying to stink up a win.

Dirrell didn’t show any signs of a real champion and knew if he got caught he was going down so he ran.

I think Dirrell will be found out, I think he knows he’s chinny too and that’s going to come out in the tournament.

In fairness to Froch, he had to sprint after Dirrell in the third to hit him and when he did he hurt Dirrell with a pretty average shot, it looks bad in slow motion because Dirrell is clearly actually running away unhurt.

Dirrell complained and whinged about the roughness, but at the end of the day he way initiating clinches when he hadn’t even been hit and ducking face to the floor, that’s not boxing either. The referee let the cliching go on too long and should have been in a lot earlier than he was, Dirrell in my opinion was worried about getting hurt and didn’t bring a great deal to the fight.

In Dirrells favour he looked sharper and quicker than Carl and would have won this fight in the USA where fights are just as biased in favour of the home fighter. I think if Dirrell had shown more confidence in his ability he could easily won the fight but at the end of the day he was there to hit and run away.

I don’t think Dirrell is going to do much in this tournament if he doesn’t show a willingness to fight, it makes for poor viewing and will not endear him to fight fans. The purists may say he won on stats but at the end of the day for all his talk of knocking out the WBC champion he didn’t come to fight.

and illustrate just how frustrated Froch’s offense was.

Would anyone seriously pay money to watch Dirrell fight again? with a big question mark over the word fight.

Personally I had Dirrell winning by at least 10 seconds

I personal thought it involved fighting each other but apparently I am mistaken, I bow to your superior knowledge.

I do hope the rest of the PPV public share your purist opinions and understand of boxing, maybe you could campaign for bigger rings and a finish line too but at the moment I think the reason boxing is struggling is because it’s not entertaining.

Call me old fashioned but I like watching fighters that hit each other and don’t think lateral movement means doing laps of the ring.

First of all, apparently the rabbit punch is legal in Europe. In both fights the Europeans seemed to always get off a punch to the back of the head in every clinch. It was especially bad during the Froch fight. One round he was getting held and just completely lined up a rabbit punch, hit Dirrell, lined him up again and just nailed him. After this absolutely egregious breach of the rules, the ref finally decides to warn Froch. At this point Froch should have been deducted a point at best, and if that fight was some sort of neutral ground maybe a DQ (at that point it was getting ridiculous). Much like most of the people here I had the fight Dirrell alot to Froch not so much. I think I had 7-4 Dirrell with Dirrell winning the round where the point was deducted. That fight was ridiculous in how it was scored but apparently in England, Froch’s chin counts as defense and Dirrell’s holding is bullshit because no one in England has ever done that ever (there is not even only one of them). Also I think Taylor had a fairly close fight but he is really starting to enter the realm of glass jaw, most cause I don’t think many fighters have that kind of ridiculous KO power in the 12th. What did most people have that fight because I had it tied going into the final and deciding round. Anyways, I really hope that the europe advantage doesn’t end up screwing someone out of the tourney.

Froch rabbit punches worse than Sam Peters, and that’s saying something. I’m rather dumbfounded that most of his UK fans ignore this. But then again, I shouldn’t be. In the parallel universe across the pond, Dirrell should have been massively penalized for clinching, but when Hatton and Calzaghe did it, such clinching never happened.

I apologize in advance to the more thoughtful fans from the UK. I know there are many of you, but the post-fight reaction from Froch supporters around the web has me a bit riled.

117-110 for Dirrell, I just couldn’t understand why the announcers were saying that the rounds were close because they didn’t seem that way to me. You could tell Gus Johnson felt the same way and it seemed like he was almost trying to cheer Dirrell to convince Al and Antonio that Dirrell was running away with it. I usually dislike it when an announcer does it, like Lampley does with Cotto, but I shared his frustration.