Froch threw 1034 punches against Kessler, landing only 25%

By Boxing News - 05/26/2013 - Comments

froch443By Scott Gilfoid: IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch’s punch stats showed a fighter who threw an awful lot of punches last night in beating Mikkel Kessler by a 12 round unanimous decision, but the accuracy from Froch was dreadful to say the least. Froch missed with 75% of his punches last night. That’s why Kessler wasn’t marked up despite Froch throwing a massive of shots.

HBO’s CompuBox stats showed that Froch threw 1034 punches but only connected on 25 percent of them. In contrast, Kessler threw less than half of the amount of punches that Froch threw with 497 punches but had a much healthier 39 percent connects percentage.

Froch wasted a ton of punches by throwing jabs that hit air all night long.

I’m sure if the stats were stopped after the first three rounds, Froch’s connect percentage would have been a lot higher, because he was throwing his jab with more authority in that part of the fight. However, when Froch got tired in the second of the fight, he lost all the power on his jab and it resembled a wet noodle. I don’t think Froch has ever thrown a lot jabs like this before and it took a lot of out of him.

Moving forward, Froch is going to have to throw less jabs if he wants to keep from fading against younger opposition with more motivation to win the fight than what we saw from Kessler. Against a fighter that really wanted it last night, Froch wouldn’t have stopped them with his pawing jab and he would have lost the fight.

Kessler looked like he didn’t have the heart for the job and I think a lot of boxing fans would agree with me on this. Kessler had the better talent, the better punch, the better speed, but he didn’t have the mental toughness to go for it this time like he did the previous time they fought. Maybe it was because he didn’t have the crowd behind him. I don’t know. I do know that he should have won the fight but he let Froch win by not going for it.

If Froch and Kessler do have a third fight, they need to stage it outside of the UK so that it’s more of a fair situation for Kessler. I doubt that’s going to happen though.

Froch’s promoter Eddie Hearn will say to Kesserl that Froch is the one with the two titles, and that if he wants a fight with him then he has to come to the UK again. If I’m Kessler, I’m telling Hearn to stuff it.

I wouldn’t come back to the UK. Froch was complaining night and day about how the first was in Denmark and how the second fight had to be in the UK to make it fair. Well, now Froch has gotten his wish. The fight was in the UK and he barely nicked it.

The third fight has to be staged outside of the UK for it to be fair. I think U.S would be perfect or maybe Germany. If Froch says it’s got to be in the UK, then Kessler needs to move on and look for other fights.



Comments are closed.