By Eric Thomas: In an article in the TimesOnline, unbeaten super middleweight Carl Froch (24-0, 19 KOs) said that he’s interested in taking on the best in the super middleweight division, saying “I’m happy to fight the likes of Jermain Taylor or Lucian Bute or Mikkel Kessler. I don’t believe in having easy fights.” Missing from those names, however, is Joe Calzaghe, who Froch has been pursuing without success for some time.
Taylor, 30, the former WBC/WBO middleweight champion, is who Froch is going after next. Taylor earned the right to face Froch by beating Jeff Lacy by a 12-round decision in November for the WBC super middleweight title eliminator. Taylor looked good, almost as good as he did before losing back to back fights with Kelly Pavlik in 2007 and 2008. In facing Taylor, Froch is poised to get a lot of praise and attention should he successfully beat him.
Froch, 31, is coming off what arguably was the most exciting fight of 2008 in his 12-round decision victory over Canadian Jean Pascal on December 6th to win the vacant WBC super middleweight title in Nottingham.
The fight was seen by many around the world, earning Froch a lot of media attention that up until then he had been sorely missing. Froch had problems with Pascal’s superior speed in the first half of the bout, getting hit by the Canadian fighter as he tried to land his bigger shots.
However, Froch never gave up on himself and asserted his will over Pascal in the second half of the fight, walking him down and hitting him continuously with hard shots. Froch’s style of fighting was like watching a larger version of Aaron Pryor the way Froch attacked Pascal to the head and body with a storm of punches in rounds seven though twelve.
Pascal, not used to being forced to fight at such a fast pace, began wilting under the strain of Froch’s heavy shots and nonstop punches and began to wear down as the rounds progressed. Pascal continued to land periodic big shots to the head, but Froch seemed not to care, just constantly coming forward and blasting Pascal with shot after shot and making him pay.
Pascal ended up getting hit with some monstrous shots in the fight, which didn’t knock him down or badly hurt him, but still having the effect of eroding his power and ability to fight back as the bout wore on into the later rounds. It was the kind of fight where there were no real losers, because even in coming up short in the loss column, Pascal fought bravely and gave a great battle.
Hopefully, with a win over Taylor, Froch can lure the other top super middleweight champions, Bute, Denis Inkin and Kessler into a unification bout with him. Froch matches up well with most of them, and with his power he’d give each of them a lot of problems. Kessler’s probably the best of the bunch, but as Calzaghe showed, he’s very beatable if you stay on top of him, not giving him space and throwing a lot of punches.
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