Kessler ready for Froch bout – News

By Scott Gilfoid: Former World Boxing Association super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler (42-2, 32 KO’s) is ready and looking forward to his stage 2 Super Six tournament fight against WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (26-0, 20 KO’s) on April 17th, in Denmark. Kessler, 30, lost his last fight in the Super Six tourney to American Andre Ward in an 11 round technical decision. The fight was stopped due to a series of cuts that Kessler had sustained in the fight as a result of damaging head butts.

Kessler had problems with the slick Ward throughout the fight and was unable to cope with Ward’s hand speed and inside fighting ability.

Kessler says “I really had a bad night against Andre Ward, but I had a good rest, analyzed everything with my team and now I am ready for Froch.” One advantage that Kessler has going against Froch is that Carl is a fighter that is a complete opposite of Ward. Froch doesn’t move well laterally like Ward, and instead stands directly in front of his opponents with his guard down low.

And instead of skillfully blocking punches with his gloves like Ward, Froch tends to block shots with his head. Froch’s hand speed is also nothing like Ward’s. Froch is rather slow of hand and needs to throw a lot of punches to get one that lands. In his fight with Andre Dirrell in October, Froch missed a great deal of punches and looked bad for the most part when the fight was on the outside.

Froch turned the fight into a rough physical affair starting in the 5th when he body slammed Dirrell to the canvas. Following that, the remainder of the rounds saw Froch mixing in fouls such as holding and hitting and throwing rabbit punches along with his other shots that were mostly missing.

There’s no denying that Kessler looked bad against Ward, even worse than he did in his 12 round decision loss to Joe Calzaghe in 2007. Some of that I think can be attributed to Kessler’s advancing age. He’s getting older and starting to show it in the ring. However, I think most of the reason for Kessler looking bad was because of the incredible talent of Ward.

I think Ward would have easily beaten Calzaghe had he took part in the Super Six tournament and I think he’s just at a higher level in terms of talent compared to Kessler. I suspect that Kessler will look like the fighter of old when he steps in the ring with Froch, and will give him a boxing lesson in front of the larger Herning crowd, in Denmark.

On a side note, Froch wants the fight to take place in Copenhagen, Denmark, so that more British fans can make the trip over to see him fight. Whether Froch gets his way or not won’t have much effect on this fight’s outcome in my view. Kessler more than capable of fighting at a high level even with a smatter of Froch fans in the crowd giving him support. I expect Froch’s fans will be more drowned out by the huge applause that Kessler gets all the way through their April 17th fight.

Kessler says “I have just started my preparation with my new coach Jimmy Montoya. Things have been going really well. We are training very hard here in Copenhagen and will move camp to Berlin next week. I feel very hungry without a world title and I will take the WBC belt from Froch.” I believe Kessler is hungry for a title, and I feel sorry for Froch.

I think he’s in trouble in this fight. I see Kessler sticking and moving all night long, frustrating Froch even worse than Dirrell did in their fight. I think Kessler is going to give Froch a serious beating in this fight. Kessler has the better overall tools, and Froch will make it easy for him by plodding forward all night long with his lantern jaw thrust out in front of him like the front of a boat. I see Kessler beating down Froch’s chin and sending him home to Nottingham, blood and battered with a lopsided defeat.

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