Froch = a British version of Librado Andrade?

By Scott Gilfoid: Former WBC/WBC super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler (42-2, 32 KO’s) says he’s in the best shape of his life for his April 24th Super Six tournament bout against World Boxing Council super middleweight champion Carl Froch (26-0, 20 KO’s) at the MCH Messecenter Herning, in Herning, Denmark. The bout has already sold out with more than 26,000 tickets sold for the fight. Kessler, 31, will have a huge audience at ringside to witness what could be the most important fight of his 12-year pro career. He can’t afford to lose to this fight, as Kessler has already been beaten by American Andre Ward in his stage 1 Super Six tournament bout.

A loss here would remove any chance for Kessler to move into the semi finals. Kessler lost his WBA super middleweight title in his loss to Ward last November. However, Kessler is being given a big break by going up against WBC title holder Froch, and thus will have a chance to immediately capture another title in his first fight after his disappointing loss to Ward. Kessler says “It’s a big opportunity to fight for the world title again.”

Kessler can’t blow, though, because this is a do or die situation for him. His opponent, the 32-year-old Froch, is well aware of the situation that Kessler is in and wants nothing better to knock him out of the tournament so that he can move on into the semi finals.

Kessler says he’s made corrections to the mistakes that he made in the Ward fight, changed trainers and picked up different sparring partners. Froch’s fighting style, a pressure oriented one, is pretty common in the boxing world, so it was likely a lot easier finding sparring partners that have a fighting style like Froch compared to those who fight in the clever manner that Ward does.

Kessler feels that he’s improved his game since the Ward loss and is a better overall fighter. He made not need to be any better than he was before, though, because Froch has a fighting style that is remarkably similar to super middleweight contender Librado Andrade, a fighter that Kessler totally dominated in a lopsided 12 round decision win in March 2007. The differences between Andrade and Froch are very slight. Both are around 6’1”, only that Andrade has the longer reach of four inches compared to Froch.

Kessler could end really dominating. In the power department, Froch and Andrade are roughly the same with Andrade having a record of (28-3, 21 KO’s) and Froch (26-0, 20 KO’s). People will point out that Froch has a slightly better record, but then again Froch only switched from fighting exclusively British fighters to top fighters around the globe only three fights ago and a good portion of Froch’s fights have come against local lads.

Andrade has been facing top quality opposition for a number of years and has already had fights against Kessler, Yusaf Mack, Robert Stieglitz, Lucian Bute (twice), Vitali Tsypko and Otis Grant. Overall, Andrade has faced better opposition than Froch and done very well against them. A lot of people believe that Andrade should have stopped Bute in their first fight 12th round in their fight in October 2008. Andrade’s talent and fighting style appears to be very close to that of Froch.

Well, if Kessler was able to dominate Andrade easily and make him look much inferior, then there’s an excellent chance that Kessler will do the same thing against Froch on April 24th, regardless of how much pressure Froch tries to put on Kessler. Believe me, it won’t be any more pressure than what Andrade put on Kessler in his fight with him in 2007.

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