Super Six dream has officially become a nightmare

There isn’t a person out there who hasn’t had “The Dream”. The dream is an idea that sounds almost too good to be true when you first realize it. It could be something as simple as two buddies right out of high school that decide to get an apartment together.
It is agreed that there will be partying, plenty of drinking and more than likely, very little time for sleep. Good times are going to be plentiful.
But once the lease is signed reality sets in. One notices that sleep is a good thing. Partying is fine, on weekends, but you have to work during the week. Your attitude changes, acting grown up with a savings account and having a nice place becomes a priority.
Now you find yourself waking up from the dream or having your dream morph into a nightmare. You still have almost a year left on the lease. You have no option but to make the best of it and hope that all of your other friends and family don’t give you the old, “I told you so”.
Dreams, at least the kind we fantazise about, usually have happy endings. Reality isn’t always so kind.
Welcome to reality Showtime.
The Super Six Tournament was a dream of the Showtime brass that quickly started to have the makings of a nightmare.
The premise was to take the best six Super Middleweights and put them in a format based on points for their performance. It sounded good, but immediately people noticed a few things that didn’t seem quite right.
First, Lucian Bute was one of the top Super Middleweights in the world, but was conspicuiously absent. Showtime brass said the Bute turned down the chance. Bute’s camp said that they were never asked, at which point Showtime admitted so much. Could it have been that Bute was close to fighting on HBO and Showtime wasn’t pleased? If that was true, just say so.
Then there was the addition of Andre Dirrell. Dirrell was ranked behind some other notable absentees and had a reputation for, at times, resembling an amateur boxer.
It seems that the bad has outweighed the good in the tournament.
Some of the bright spots: Andre Ward has established himself as a star and now appears to be the tournament favorite. Arthur Abraham and Jermain Taylor engaged in a good fight that ended in explosive fashion. Carl Froch fought Dirrell in front of a boisterous pro Froch crowd. Froch and Mikkel Kessler went back and fourth before Kessler prevailed to get himself into the win column.
Now the bad: The Ward-Kessler fight was marred by constant headbutts. Dirrell’s running and clinching frustrated Froch to the point that the fight was almost unwatchable. Taylor’s violent kayo loss forced him to withdraw from the tournament. Arthur Abraham was DQ’d for hitting Dirrell when he was obviously down. Allan Green replaced Taylor and was the closest thing to a no show that a fighter could be, his performance was an embarrassment.
And things are continuing to unravel for Showtime. Kessler has left the Six because of eye trouble. Participants are complaining that Ward seems to have all of his fights on his home turf. Dirrell and Ward couldn’t settle on a site and now Dirrell says that he is still suffering the effects of the Abraham foul.
Now Glen Johnson has been added to the Six and Ward is set to fight Sakio Bika, in you guessed it, a non Super Six fight.
The dream was nice, but it is flat out time to pull the plug on this tourney nightmare. We have been able to get great matchups during the last year, but the problem with the tourney is the format.
This isn’t the amateurs and we don’t need a point system. My belief has always been that you ask the top eight and have a single elimination. You would have been guaranteed good match ups and quickly eliminated some competitors. Would you have had bad decisions and complaints? Of course, but that is boxing.
Keep it at six entrants and you could have had a bracket format. Round one: Number 1 and 2 seeds get a bye. Number 3 fights number 6 and number 4 takes on number 5. Losers are done.
Number 1 then fights the lowest remaining seed and 2 fights the higher remaining seed.
Winners then fight for the championship. Easy, simple and quick.
It is time for Showtime to pull the plug. Let Froch and Abraham fight, it should be a great fight. Let the winner fight Ward and call it a day. No need to add Johnson and even though it isn’t a Six bout, what happens should the hard hitting Bika beat or kayo Ward? Will the tournament lose all of it’s luster at that point?
Super Six, you had a good life, but sometimes you have to let go of your dreams, especially when they turn into nightmares.