Groves: Froch can’t change his style at 36

By Boxing News - 09/25/2013 - Comments

groves55By Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten George Groves (19-0, 15 KO’s) believes that IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch (31-2, 22 KO’s) is a one-dimensional fighter unable to come up with different plans of attack after his initial plan A fails to work in their fight on November 23rd at the Phones 4u Arena in Manchester, UK.

Groves says he’s only seen Froch fighting in a similar pattern during his career, and he doesn’t think he’s capable of coming up with something new that will give him any problems.

Groves told Talksport “He [Froch] can’t really change his spots at 36. He hasn’t really shown me anything new or clever, and I don’t think he’ll be able to do that on the night. He isn’t able to make adjustments in between rounds with 1 minute rest. I’m very confident I’ll beat Carl Froch and beat him well.”

I hate to say it but I totally agree with Mr. Groves. In all the fights I’ve seen Froch in I’ve only observed him use 3 different styles. He mostly likes to come forward looking to land his big power shots.

If he’s not doing that, Froch backs off when he’s facing someone that is nailing him with big power shots like Mikkel Kessler, Jermain Taylor and at times Andre Dirrell.

Against Kessler in their second fight last May, Froch jabbed constantly for 12 rounds. Froch had never done that before in his fights, and Kessler looked totally clueless with what to do despite the fact that Froch’s jab was just a weak one without any power on it.

Kessler eventually figured it out that it was easy to walk past Froch’s limp jab to nail him in the head, but then Kessler had given away the first 4 rounds.

So you see, Froch pretty much only has three ways to fight, and none of those methods are likely going to result in success against Groves.

Froch won’t be able to have success with his weak jab, and if he backs off to avoid getting hit by Groves, he’ll simply lose the rounds due to his lack of aggression.

Froch’s favorite style of fighting with him coming forward for 12 rounds will be the easiest one for Groves to nullify because he’ll simply use movement to nullify that. Groves will use the same blueprint that Dirrell and Andre Ward used to negate Froch’s aggressive style of fighting by attacking him in waves.

Groves won’t stand in front of Froch for 12 rounds, because he knows that’s the only way Froch has a chance of winning this fight. As such, we’ll see Groves using his superior hand and foot speed to get in quick to nail Froch with 3-punch combinations and then getting away from him to survey the damage.

I see this fight as being even more one-sided than Ward’s win over Froch, because Groves won’t stay in the pocket as long as Ward did. He’ll batter Froch and then get away. With that said, I think Groves has the game to stay in close and smother Froch on the inside the same way that Ward did at times in their fight.

Groves says he’s going to use a lot of different things on Froch to beat him, so I would expect one of those plans being for him to get in close and take advantage of Froch’s inability to fight in close.



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