I thought he would fall apart under pressure from Froch, but he didn’t at all. He showed tremendous athletic ability; excellent speed of hand and foot, fantastic head movement and stellar technical skills. He showed a lot of great attributes, and convinced me that he could…could be the division stand out.

HOWEVER, the sizable contingent of boxing fans that are screaming robbery are out of their mind. Just for the record, I scored the fight to Dirrell by 1 point. But I think he showed a naivety in the way he fought this fight. You do not win a world title fighting like that, especially not in front of a home town crowd. He never once imposed himself on the fight. Half of the rounds could have been decided by a flip of a coin, and guess what, the champion is going to get the benefit of the doubt in that situation.

Dirrell was throwing about 10-15 punches in some round on the back foot, and was constantly holding. You are not going to win no world title fighting that negatively. Even if Froch’s work wasn’t as clean, he was the one pressing the action and bullying Dirrell around the ring. That type of thing can influence judges when there are so few scoring shots. I think he also made a mistake by starting to complain and allowing himself to get irritated when the fight got rough. Froch just dug in and did his thing. Dirrell started mouthing off to the referee, and falling onto the canvas and so on. I think that sent out the wrong signs. He was giving off the impression that he was starting to unravel or Froch was getting to him. All these things can change the direction of a close fight.

With regard to the point deduction, I think the referee did a terrible job with handling the deduction, but it was overdue. Dirrell was holding excessively and spoiling. The ref should have made an issue of it far sooner. A lot of the rough stuff coming from Froch was in response to being held constantly and nothing being done about it.

Again, if you want the title, go out and impose yourself and win it because you are not going to steal rounds like that. As I said Andre showed a lot. I believed that he was the best of the American hopefuls, and I think he showed that here. I hope he uses this fight as a valuable learning experience, and next time out he will be much better. And that’s the great thing about this tournament, he can pick himself up, reevaluate, and get right back in there.

Im just waiting to hear a confirmed date and venue for Kessler vs Froch now. If it’s in Copenhagen as i expect it to be, I think i will have to be in attendance for that one.