By Scott Gilfoid: George Groves (19-1, 15 KO’s) believes that IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch (32-2, 23 KO’s) fought like someone without a clue last Saturday night for long stretches in their controversial fight at the Phones 4u Arena in Manchester, UK. Groves thinks he dominated the 36-year-old Froch in every way you could think of until the referee Howard John Foster jumped in between them and prematurely stopped the fight.
Groves doesn’t know what to think of with Foster other than he made a huge blunder in stopping the bout.
Groves said to Sky Sports “I could bully him whenever I wanted to. He was clueless for large portions of the fight. Carl sat down post-fight at ringside and said ‘Let’s have a rematch.’ But looking back, I think he said it because he was hoping for some cheers from the crowd, and probably he doesn’t believe he wants a rematch. I deserve a rematch. It was an unjust decision.”
Groves went onto say that he’s superior to Froch in every part of his game, and that Froch got really lucky when the referee suddenly halted the fight while the two of them were still in the thick of battle rather than letting them fight on.
I do totally agree with Groves about Froch looking totally clueless in the fight for pretty much the entire fight except in the last seconds where he hurt Groves with a wild right hand punch. You take that part of the round away, and the fight is 100 percent for Groves. I only gave Froch the 9th round because he was schooled in the other rounds of the fight. However, two judges had Groves up by just 1 point at 76-75, 76-75. The other judge seemed to have his head on straight in scoring the fight by a 78-73. I don’t know how those two judges could have seen the same fight that I saw and come to the conclusion that Froch was trailing by just 1 point. That was some sad, sad scoring if you ask me.
Groves is in a situation where he could be ignored permanently by Froch after this fight. With the stoppage loss, Groves isn’t in the position to get anything from Froch unless he wants to give him the rematch, which I seriously doubt he does. If Froch does decide to fight Groves again, he could say that it has to take place in his home city of Nottingham, UK, and we already saw Froch win a controversial bout over Andre Dirrell in Nottingham in 2009. Groves will have to take what he can get if he wants the Froch bout. He won’t have any bargaining power at all.