Froch says he wants to win the IBF and WBA titles

By Boxing News - 02/21/2010 - Comments

Image: Froch says he wants to win the IBF and WBA titlesBy William Mackay: WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (26-0, 20 KO’s) says he wants to stick around for another three to four more years, and collect both the World Boxing Association and IBF super middleweight titles before retiring.

In an article at the Dailymail, Froch says “I’ve got three or four years left. I want the IBF and the WBA titles, I want hard challenges and I want to be the undisputed champion.”

For Froch to accomplish that, it would mean that he would have to beat both IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute and WBA title holder Andre Ward. However, for Froch to beat even one of those fighters would be maybe asking a lot of his abilities because Froch didn’t look great in scraping out a narrow 12 round split decision over Andre Dirrell in October 2009.

Dirrell, 26, is considered by some boxing experts to be the weakest fighter in the Super Six tournament or at least he was until Allan Green recently joined the tournament. Froch barely beat Dirrell, and won what some people call a questionable decision. For Froch to beat arguably better fighters than Dirrell, he’s going to have to step up his game a couple of notches and find better accuracy with his punches and better hand speed and defense.

Froch missed over and over with his punches against Dirrell, and only seemed to be able to hit him with any kind of regularity when he was in close while the two of them were in clinches. Ward doesn’t clinch a lot and throws more punches than Dirrell. Froch could end up taking a beating in a fight against Ward and end up losing.

Bute also is a tough fighter to deal with because of his in and out attacks. Plus, Bute has excellent power. Froch would again be facing an opponent that won’t be standing directly in front of him. If Froch thinks that Dirrell moved a lot, he’ll really be surprised at all the movement from Bute. He’s very tough to fight and hard to hit.

Froch might have to revise his three to four year retirement timeline if he steps it up against those guys and loses. However, Froch could find just as big a problem in his stage 2 and stage 3 fights against Mikkel Kessler and Arthur Abraham. Those will be very tough fights for Froch and I’d be surprised if Froch escapes with his WBC title still in his possession by the time he’s finished with them.



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