By Scott Gilfoid: Former IBF/WBA/WBC/WBO super middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe is picking IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch (30-2, 22 KO’s) to beat WBA super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler (46-2, 35 KO’s) in their long awaited rematch next month on May 25th at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
Calzaghe’s reasoning for selecting the 35-year-old Froch to defeat the 34-year-old Kessler is that Calzaghe thinks Kessler hasn’t aged as well as Froch, and can no longer get around the ring like he once did earlier in his career, and he also thinks Froch’s home country advantage will be a huge factor in his favor for this fight.
Calzaghe said to express.co.uk “Where I fancy Froch is that he has aged a big better than Kessler. Kessler isn’t as mobile as he used to be, he’s a lot easier to hit and I’ve noticed he doesn’t move his head like he used to. He’s a bit flat-footed…I’d have to go with Froch.”
What Calzaghe says makes a lot of sense, but I’m not sure that it’s age that Calzaghe is seeing more than just plain ring rust from Kessler. You have to remember that Kessler has only fought three times in the last four years. He fought once in 2010, once in 2011 and twice in 2012. How does Kessler expect to keep his old form with him fighting only once a year instead of three times? Kessler has missed out on five fights during that time and he’d likely be right back where he was in 2007 in the prime of his career had he remained active.
As far as Kessler fighting flat-footed and not moving his head as much, I don’t think Calzaghe remembers Kessler’s fighting style too well because he’s always fought that way. If you look at Kessler in his prime, he was a flat-footed fighter that liked to stand on the outside shooting jabs. He was skipping around the ring like Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Kessler was always flat-footed and he never moved his head. Nothing has changed in that respect over the years. Kessler fights with the same style as he always did. Granted, he’s been mixing it up a little more in his last three fights than he did before that, but you have to look at the guys that his promoter has fed him in his last three fights. They’ve given him pure fodder to face, so of course he’s going to mix it up a lot more than he did in the past because it was too easy for him not to.
I think Kessler is the better fighter than Froch just as he was in 2010. The only thing that I have concerns about is the location of the fight. It’s taking place in the UK, and there’s going to be a ton of screaming Brits shouting their lungs out for Froch and I think we could see Froch get another hometown decision like the one that he got for his fight with Andre Dirrell when Froch beat him in Nottingham.
Dirrell appeared to win the fight but was given a loss. Will the same thing happen with Kessler. I don’t know but it can’t be a good thing that he’s taking the chance of it happening. The fight should have been in a neutral venue like perhaps Sweden or Norway. One of those countries.
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