Froch: “I honestly don’t believe I’ve reached my peak”

By Scott Gilfoid: WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (25-0, 20 KO’s) keeps track of his training regimen like a detailed accountant, tracking every exercise he does. And at 32, Froch thinks he’s still improving as a fighter. But who knows if this is true or not.

It might very well be that Froch is getting slightly better as he ages, but the amount of improvement likely won’t be enough for him to win the Super Six tourney that Froch is about to take part in starting on October 17th.

It’s nice that Froch is tracking everything, but for him to use this as evidence that he’s getting better as a fighter seems a little flimsy and misguided on his part. However, if it gives himself belief, so be it. More power to him. I’d have a much better feeling about Froch and his ability if he didn’t just finish going life and death with Jermain Taylor on April 25th, needing a knockout in the last seconds of the bout to pull out the win.

Froch might as well scrap that diary that he’s filling out, because his progress needs to get a lot better if he plans on getting out of the group I part of the Super Six tourney, much less actually winning the thing. I’m all for Froch keeping track of his conditioning, because perhaps without being in the best shape possible, Froch probably would have been blown out of the water by Taylor last April.

Conditioning is one thing, but talent is quite another. It doesn’t matter if Froch doesn’t touch an M & M or eat a McDonald’s hamburger, if he doesn’t have the talent to beat extraordinary fighters like Andre Dirrell, Andre Ward, Mikkel Kessler or Arthur Abraham, what’s the whole point? Some fighters naturally have more talent than others and that’s just the way things are.

Froch may indeed be improving, but the amount of improvement needed to beat Kessler, Dirrell and Ward is probably off the chart for Froch and it may be physically impossible for him to do this with his body, no matter how hard he trains. Froch could train forever, but that doesn’t mean he could run 200 meters in 19 seconds. It’s just not going to happen.

In this tournament, Froch is facing fighters with better speed, boxing ability and with power as good as his own. And it doesn’t matter how much stuff Froch writes down in his diary about his training. Those guys are just super talented, which is why they were invited to the tourney in the first place. Now if Froch was making improvements that were suddenly off the chart, maybe I’d give him a slight chance at beating Ward, Dirrell, Kessler and Abraham.

However, I kind of doubt that the 32-year-old Froch is getting much better in any of his exercises at this age. He can down his Geritol, eat his Wheaties or whatever he takes to get the most out of his body, but I don’t think it’s going to help him in this case.

It takes talent to beat those kinds of fighters, and I don’t know that Froch has it in him. His come from behind win over Taylor was really telling. It seemed to show that Froch was at the peak of what he’s capable of doing, getting the most out of his body that he could. However, if Froch is barely beating fighters like Taylor, what does that tell you about Froch’s chances of winning the tourney?

Not too many people are giving Taylor any chance of winning the tournament. In fact, a lot of people see him getting eliminated in the group I part. If Froch is barely beating Taylor, it would suggest that his talent is more or less about the same level. Based on that, one could surmise that Froch will also be eliminated in the first portion of the tourney.

15 Responses to “Froch: “I honestly don’t believe I’ve reached my peak””