By Scott Gilfoid: George Groves (19-0, 15 KO’s) figures to be a terrible match-up for the slower, easier to hit IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch (31-2, 22 KO’s) on Saturday night at the Phones 4u Arena in Manchester, and Groves feels that Froch is going to have a devil of a time trying to deal with all the different looks that he gives him in this fight.
Groves sees Froch as a fighter with a lot of mileage on him from his grueling fights over the years, and he thinks this is going to hurt him in this fight.
Groves says “This is a risky, horrible style match-up for him, and he realizes there’s every chance he gets taken to school and stopped for the first time in his career.”
I hate to say it but this is a terrible style match-up for Froch, and it’s coming at a really bad time for him because he looked horrible in his last fight against Mikkel Kessler. It’s not as bad of a style match-up for Froch as it was for his fights against Andre Dirrell and Andre Ward, but it’s definitely a really, really bad one because Groves uses a lot of movement, he has superior speed and he hits as hard as Froch, if not harder.
Groves has pretty much every advantage you could think of for this fight except for size and chin. The chin really won’t matter because I don’t think Groves will be taking a lot of solid shots in this fight due to his speed, and the size advantage that Froch has won’t be a big deal because he doesn’t have the jab to use it. Froch’s limp jab will be little more than a small speed bump for Groves, and he’ll easily get past that useless weapon again and again on Saturday night to score hurtful punches to the head and body of Froch.
I really don’t see how Froch can win this fight other than getting a lucky KO. If he doesn’t knock Groves out, then he’s going to get a boxing lesson and end up looking old and over-the-hill in this fight. Froch pretty much has no other chance of winning it other than going all out and looking to score a stoppage. Short of that, we’ll see Froch get taken to school by the much younger 25-year-old Groves. Maybe Froch’s promoter Eddie Hearn will be able to wrangle a rematch deal between them if Froch loses, because he’s going to need a rematch. This isn’t like his loss to Ward and his controversial decision of Dirrell where Froch can simply walk away and start over as if nothing happened. Groves swims in the same small pond as Froch in the UK, and there’s no way that Froch can ignore the loss without it hurting his career. He’ll need a rematch to try and regain his status with boxing fans.
I can see a lot of excuses from Froch after he loses this fight, and I can’t wait to hear what they’re going to be. I can just hear Froch saying something like ‘I wasn’t switched on. I lost it in the dressing room before the fight because I was thinking about Christmas.’ Oh boy, that’s going to go over well I bet.
The fight will be televised by Sky Sports Box Office.
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