By Scott Gilfoid: You can pretty much put WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch into the same bed as Amir Khan in terms of a complete lack of an inside game. Froch is about as weak a fighter as I can think of in the super middleweight division when it comes to trying to find his way around on the inside. He’s all elbows, and doesn’t have a clue how to move, block shots or throw them.

Andre Ward has got a huge advantage in this area, because he’s not just competent on the inside, he’s a master craftsman. Ward has often been compared to Bernard Hopkins with his excellence on the inside. The two of them are like mirrored images in close. Ward has studied Hopkins carefully and does everything that he does when working over his opponents at close range.

And like I said, if I was to compare Froch to anyone in boxing it would be Khan in terms of his lack of inside fighting skills. Froch may not try and bend his opponents’ head down or shove his opponents the way that Khan does, but he does love to hit and hold, and throw rabbit shots when in close. Froch has been lucky in his last few fights in the Super Six tournament because he hasn’t had to fight anyone that attempted to fight him in close.

The last guy that fought Froch on the inside was Andre Dirrell back in October 2009. Froch looked terrible. Instead of battling Dirrell, Froch started fouling by holding and hitting and throwing rabbit punches in close. I lost count of how many times Froch hit Dirrell rabbit shots. And the referee lost complete control over the fight and didn’t lift a finger to control Froch’s fouling instincts.

The bad thing about Saturday’s fight is that Steve Smoger is reportedly going to be the referee and he’s kind of a hands off type ref that likes to let fighters work things out themselves in the ring. I like that in some respects but you can’t have Froch going primitive in the ring without any control. If Froch starts getting dominated on the inside, I can see him reverting back to his form of the Dirrell fight and just going wild with fouling. Smoger has got to step in at some point to control Froch otherwise we could have a real mess in the ring with Ward getting body slammed and rabbit punched into submission.