Jack defeats Dirrell; Jacobs defeats Truax

By Jeff Sorby - 04/24/2015 - Comments

In a surprise upset, WBC super middleweight champion Anthony Dirrell (27-1-1, 22 KOs) was defeated by #8 WBC challenger Badou Jack (19-1-1, 12 KOs) by a 12 round majority decision on Friday night in a fight that wasn’t supposed to be competitive at the UIC Pavilion, in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Dirrell, 30, looked under motivated from the start as he threw single shots and spent much of the time clinching to try and shutdown Jack’s pressure style offense.

Jack didn’t have fast feet, and Dirrell likely could have out-boxed him if he was a mobile fighter like his older brother Andre Dirrell, but he simply didn’t have the mobility to stay away from Jack. All throughout the fight, Jack would cut off the ring on Dirrell and force him to fight on the inside where he was less skilled. Dirrell would then clinch to stop Jack from nailing him with shots. But Jack used these opportunities to rough Dirrell up by hitting him to the body, side of the head and even to the back of the head.

The scores were 114-114, 116-112 and 115-113. The 114-114 score was a ridiculous score for the fight because Dirrell clearly was beaten by Jack, and there’s no way he fought well enough to rate a draw.

This was a voluntary defense for Dirrell and it was supposed to be a fairly easy fight. Jack had been knocked out in just one round last year by slugger Derek Edwards. This is the same Edwards that Dirrell’s older brother Andre Dirrell totally schooled in beating by a wide 12 round unanimous decision last December. Perhaps for this reason Anthony Dirrell looked like he hadn’t trained for the type of fight that Jack brought to him, as he didn’t look at all ready to deal with an inside pressure fighter.

Clinching Jack all night obviously didn’t work because he simply kept punching despite being held. Dirrell should have realized that he wasn’t going to win the fight by holding Jack because the Swedish fighter kept throwing punches through the clinches. The referee kept warning Dirrell to stop holding, but he failed to listen to him and come up with a different game plan to slow Jack down.

“Anthony Dirrell is a hell of a fighter. I told him that I’m not scared of his barking,” Jack said after the fight.

In hindsight, Dirrell would have been much better off facing his #1 WBC mandatory challenger George Groves in a fight that likely would have given Dirrell a better payday and a better chance of winning. Groves, with his shaky chin and his outside fighting style, would have been a better fit than Jack with his inside fighting skills.

In the co-feature, WBA regular middleweight champion Daniel Jacobs (29-1m 26 KOs) dominated challenger Caleb Truax (25-2-2, 15 KOs) to stop him in the 12th round. Jacobs hurt Truax with some big punches in the 12th round, and then finished him off with a series of big head shots. Referee Dave Smith then stepped in and stopped the fight with Truax still on his feet but cowering against the ropes. The fight was stopped at 2:12 of the round.

Jacobs did not look like a great champion in this fight. He wasn’t putting his shots together in the way that he needed to do for him to dominate a guy that was clearly less talented than him. It appeared that Jacobs was concerned with Truax’s punching power, as he was able to get Jacob’s attention a number of times in the fight with hard right hands to the head. It wasn’t easy for Truax to land his power shots due to his poor hand speed, but when he did land hard punches, Jacobs looked uncomfortable.

The performance from Jacobs tonight suggests that he’s going to have to be very careful in the type of opponents that he faces because if he’s matched tough against someone like Gennady Golovkin, who he will have to eventually face if he wants to keep his WBA title, he’ll likely get obliterated by him. At this point, Jacobs would have big problems with the likes of Tureano Johnson, Martin Murray and Billy Joe Saunders. Those are all contenders that the WBA has ranked in their top 15 right now.

Other boxing action on the card:

Keith Tapia KO 1 Jason Smith
Roberto Garcia UD 8 James Stevenson
Alex Martin UD 8 Jonathan Garcia
Rickey Edwards UD 6 Shiwone Gortman
Eddie Ramirez TKO 5 Jerome Rodriguez
Jose Felix Quezada KO 2 Jamar Saunders
Semajay Thomas TKO 2 Jose Santiago
Ramiro Carrillo TKO 2 Ramon Guevara