Froch is hoping Kessler beats Ward

By Scott Gilfoid: World Boxing Council super middleweight champion Carl Froch is counting on WBA super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler beating Andre Ward this Saturday night in their Super Six bout in Oakland, California. Froch, 32, has selfish reasons for wanting Kessler to win the fight, namely because Froch wants a shot at winning Kessler’s WBA title.

If Kessler gets beat by Ward, then Froch won’t have a chance to capture Kessler’s title and besides that, the fight won’t get nearly as much attention if Kessler is coming off a loss to the young 25-year-old Ward. Froch will need to be a lot better against Kessler than he was against American Andre Dirrell in their Super Six fight last month on October 17th.

Froch won the bout by a 12 round split decision, but didn’t look at all good in the fight. Dirrell landed the cleaner shots, showed the better hand speed and movement and looked to have won the fight by the accounts of many boxing fans who saw the fight.

A good portion of the boxing public also felt that Froch won the bout, but there was equal amount who felt that Dirrell should have been given the decision. I personally scored the bout for Dirrell eight rounds to three with one even. Froch had huge problems with Dirrell’s speed in the first four rounds of the bout, but then began to foul in the 5th by throwing Dirrell to the canvas.

The rest of the bout was ugly to watch because of the two clashing styles of fighting. Like I said, Froch is going to have to fight much better than that if he wants to beat Kessler in his next fight. Even if Kessler has the title by the time he fights Froch, it probably won’t matter much other than something to promote the fight. Froch doesn’t have the hand speed, movement of the boxing skills that Kessler possesses and will have a huge time trying to overcome those advantages for Kessler.

As for Kessler’s fight against Ward, this is likely going to be the toughest fight for Kessler in the entire Super Six tournament. Ward has much faster hand speed compared to Kessler, and has better defensive skills and equal power. Really, there’s only department that Kessler has an advantage in and that’s his experience. And even Kessler’s experience is rather limited because he’s only fought Joe Calzaghe and a number of good fighters like Anthony Mundine, Dimitri Sartison and Librado Andrade.

None of those fighters are anywhere near the class of Ward, and thus they don’t count for much. Ward has the better amateur background, and won a Gold Medal in the 2004 Olympics. Kessler has had the benefit of fighting during the dead years of the super middleweight division before the arrival of the talented Americans’ Andre Dirrell, Ward and the almost equally talented Romanian Lucian Bute.

Kessler didn’t look good in his last fight against Gusmyr Perdomo in September, a fight in which Kessler took a lot of punishment in before stopping Perdomo in the 4th round. It was Kessler’s first bout in a year and he looked older and slower than he was in the past.

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