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Replacing Jermain Taylor with Allan Green would solve Super Six quandary
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At least Andre Dirrell is still alive in the Super Six tournament. At least Jermain Taylor is still alive, period.
But that doesn’t mean the tournament got off to a good start Saturday.
The officiating in Dirrell’s split-decision loss to Carl Froch was much worse than the frontier injustice in Texas two months ago that gave Juan Diaz a decision over Paulie Malignaggi. Reprehensible officiating in any of these high profile fights belies the premise that the tournament is supposed to be good for what ails boxing.
What might actually kill the sport would be putting Taylor in the ring against Andre Ward in late winter as scheduled in the second stage of the Super Six. Taylor should retire after losing three of his past five fights by knockout, counting Saturday’s loss to Arthur Abraham that sent Taylor to the hospital with a concussion.
It isn’t clear whether it occurred to anyone beforehand that the Super Six field might disintegrate before the tournament runs its course. But there is plenty of speculation about replacing Taylor, most of it centering around once-beaten Allan Green, who probably was the seventh choice for the six-man field anyway.
One account has Ward’s promoter Dan Goossen proposing an elimination between Green (who plodded to a victory over previously unbeaten Tarvis Simms on Oct. 2) and Edison Miranda (who beat Green in 2007, lost to Ward in May, subsequently joined Goossen-Tutor, and knocked out young Francisco Sierra in the first round Thursday in Lemoore, Calif.), but Miranda has lost four fights since he beat Green, two of them to Abraham, and is less proven at 168 pounds than Green.
Lucian Bute would be a better choice to replace Taylor, but if he were available, he’d have been in this field in the first place. As soon as Taylor announces his retirement, or that he can’t adhere to the Super Six schedule, he should be replaced by Green.
The way the points format in the tournament works, Green would sustain an immediate handicap, with one opportunity fewer than the others to score points in the first stage. But Green surely would welcome the opportunity. The Green-Taylor swap also might be a bit unfair to Arthur Abraham, even though he would retain the three points he earned the hard way Saturday by knocking out Taylor in the ring.
But it would keep the tournament going without much of a hitch, considering Saturday’s damage, some of which Showtime executive Ken Hershman chooses not to acknowledge.
"The launch was great,” he said. “The production was great. Carl Froch sold more tickets than he had ever sold with over 10,000 people in Nottingham, and Arthur Abraham sold out his arena with over 14,000 people.”
Nottingham has been starved for someone to love ever since Robin Hood stopped taking from the rich and giving to the poor more than 500 years ago. Elsewhere, Froch slid Saturday from arguably the most lovable man in the tournament to least lovable with his boorish behavior and filthy fighting, even if he does have a hot girlfriend who mitigates some of the distaste he’s generating.
And the Super Six still has Ward and Mikkel Kessler (fighting each other Nov. 21 in Oakland) as well as Abraham – and Dirrell, don’t forget – to mitigate the early distaste the tournament has generated.
If Ward and Kessler fight a classic, and if the Taylor situation is handled well, the Super Six may yet fulfill its promise.
SUPER SIX FORMAT: Each boxer fights three bouts against different opponents in the field in the points-based Group Stage of competition (A win generates two points, with a one point bonus for a knockout or TKO; a loss earns no points; and a draw earns one). After the Group Stage, the four fighters with the highest point totals will advance to the single-elimination semifinals. The two winners of the semifinals will fight for the Super Six World Boxing Classic trophy.
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