Hearn to Cleverly: Forget about Froch, he’s a legend

By Scott Gilfoid: I really got to hand it to Eddie Hearn, the promoter for IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch. This guy can come up with some priceless excuses for not matching Froch against talented fighters like WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly.

Check out this excuse from Hearn for not putting Froch in with the dangerous Cleverly in an interview at Sky Sports News: “The offer [£1million] they [Frank Warren] made us was probably half of what I’d pay Carl for the same fight. I told Carl about it last night and he laughed. Carl feels sorry for Nathan and thinks he’s a good young fighter. My advice to Cleverly would be forget about Froch, he’s a legend.”

Froch a legend? Oh boy, now I’ve heard it all. Hearn must be drunk on success from Froch’s win over former IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute. He needs to come down from that high and wake up to the real world. The only reason Froch won that fight was because Bute got a little cocky from all the soft touches that his Canadian promoters had been feeding him for the past four years and he obviously figured Froch was another easy mark.

Bute could have won that fight, but he tried to beat Froch with brute strength instead of copying the blue print that the talented Andre Dirrell created when he worked Froch over – and got jobbed – in Nottingham three years ago. Dirrell created a masterpiece blueprint to beat Froch, which was later followed by Andre Ward to easily beat Froch last year in the Super Six finals in December of 2011.

I don’t know but I get the feeling that Froch and Hearn want no part of Cleverly. I sure does seem that way, doesn’t it? You know what? I smell fear coming from Nottingham. When you think you’ve reached the top, some fighters get risk aversive. I think we might have a little bit of that going on here. Cleverly isn’t an easy out like Froch’s next opponent Yusaf Mack, and I think Hearn and Froch don’t want to risk being brought back down to earth before they get their nice little cash out fight against Bute and possibly Mikkel Kessler.