clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Anthony Dirrell wins first world title, beats Sakio Bika in rematch

Anthony Dirrell picked up the WBC super middleweight title tonight on Showtime, beating Sakio Bika in a down and dirty rematch.

Stephen Dunn
Scott Christ is the managing editor of Bad Left Hook and has been covering boxing for SB Nation since 2006.

It wasn't pretty, and the science sure as hell wasn't sweet, but Anthony Dirrell picked up his first world title in pro boxing tonight, outpointing Sakio Bika in a rugged, messy fight at the StubHub Center, winning an unanimous decision on scores of 117-110, 116-111, and 114-113. BLH had it 116-111 for Dirrell.

Dirrell (27-0-1, 22 KO) beat the odds once again in his career, as he's already overcome non-Hodgin's lymphoma and a bad motorcycle accident, and now has surprised many by becoming the first of he and brother Andre to win a world title in boxing. If you'd made that prediction four or five years ago, you could have gotten some great odds.

Bika (32-6-3, 21 KO) didn't go quietly, which he never does. The Cameroonian, now living in Australia, was his usual dirty, hard knocks self tonight, clinching a lot, diving into Dirrell plenty, and to be fair, that all came back from Dirrell, too.

But what Anthony managed to do that Bika never did was land clean, telling blows. He was clearly the superior technical boxer, and he appeared to hurt Bika a few times, too.

A big credit goes to referee Jack Reiss, who took control of the fight and turned it into something resembling a boxing match starting in round three, after an opening pair of rounds that hardly looked like professional boxing at all.

Sign up for the newsletter Sign up for the Bad Left Hook Daily Roundup newsletter!

A daily roundup of all your global boxing news from Bad Left Hook