Groves and Cleverly helping Kessler get ready for Froch

By Boxing News - 05/07/2013 - Comments

kessler#11By Scott Gilfoid: WBA super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler (46-2, 35 KO’s) is being helped by Brits Nathan Cleverly and George Groves for his fight this month against IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch (30-2, 22 KO’s) on May 25th at the O2 Arena in London, UK.

Kessler is really pleased with the sparring sessions with Groves and Cleverly, and he feels that this is going to give him a real advantage when he steps inside the ring with Froch.

Kessler said: “This is the best preparation I could have asked for…it’s exactly the kind of warm-up I need to beat Carl Froch again.”

I don’t see how either of those guys are going to be much of any help in getting Kessler ready for the Froch bout because neither of them are anything like Froch. Groves is kind of a blend of Arthur Abraham and David Haye, albeit without the power, and Cleverly is like Joe Calzaghe once you strip away all the hand speed, defensive skills and foot movement. He has a completely different style of fighting compared to Froch.

The guy that Kessler should be sparring with is Thomas Oosthuizen. He’s very similar to Froch, and is even around the same height as him.

Kessler needs to not over-prepare himself for this fight because having all these guys spar him is just going to mess up his head by having him think too much. Kessler has enough talent to get the job done without bringing in guys with a completely different fighting style compared to Froch.

The only thing Kessler needs to beat Froch is good conditioning so that he can fight hard for the full three minutes of every round because he’s going to need to be able to do that to get the decision.

The ideal sparring partner to get Kessler ready for Froch would be someone like Andre Ward or Bernard Hopkins. Kessler wouldn’t even need to spar with Ward in the physical sense.

All he’d have to do is go over inside fighting with him and/or watch his fight against Froch and then do exactly what he did to beat Froch on the inside. It would be better to actually meet with Ward so he could go over it with him, but that’s obviously not a possibility being this close to the fight, but I think it would be a lot more valuable than wasting his time sparring with Cleverly and Groves.



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