Khan: Froch should retire

By Boxing News - 11/27/2013 - Comments

froch5629By Scott Gilfoid: Amir Khan thinks IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch (32-2, 22 KO’s) should retire from boxing following his controversial 9th round TKO win last Saturday night against challenger George Groves (19-1, 15 KO’s) in Manchester, UK. Khan thinks Froch took a great deal of punishment in that fight and was dominated for 8 rounds before getting the tainted stoppage in the 9th when the referee Howard John Foster jumped in between the two fighters during an exchange and put a headlock around the still fighting Groves.

Khan said to the Daily Mail “He got a very close win against Groves because he was losing almost every round. He was losing the fight. Groves was the stronger fighter. While he is still champion, he should call it a day. The referee stopped the fight too soon. The fight would’ve have gone the distance and Groves would’ve won on points.”

Khan didn’t think Groves was hurt at the time that Foster stopped the bout. He just thinks Foster prematurely halted the bout while it was still very much underway with both fighters clear-headed.

Khan also pointed out that Groves isn’t one of the top fighters in the super middleweight division, yet he was able to do that to Froch and make him look really bad. To Khan, that means that Froch doesn’t have it anymore and should get out of the sport. Khan thinks Froch is taking too many hard shots to the head, and that his bouts are too grueling now.

I don’t know if Froch has lost a lot. If you look back to his fights against Andre Dirrell and Jermain Taylor, you’ll see that Froch has always looked like this, and he’s always struggled. He should have arguably lost the Dirrell fight by a lopsided decision, and Taylor had Froch beat until he was able to pull out the victory by stopping Taylor in the 12th and final round.

The thing is Froch has been really lucky because those fights should have been defeats for him, and Froch also got lucky last Saturday night when Foster jumped on Groves while they were still fighting. It was just luck for Froch. If a different referee had been in there or if Foster had held back and let them fight, the bout probably would have went the distance. Of course, with two of the judges scoring the fight 76-75 for Groves at the time of the stoppage, we might have seen Froch still get his hand raised at the end anyway, even with Groves dominating like he’d been.

If these two judges were able to come away from the fight seeing only one point separating Groves and Froch after 8 rounds, then that gives me the impression that Froch would have likely gotten a decision with these two judges giving him most of the last four rounds unless Groves was able to really put it on Froch in a major way. I saw Groves winning every round except the 8th and 9th. I don’t know what these two judges thinking, but it was one-sided to me.

I really doubt Froch is going to retire anytime soon. He’s making too much money right now, and if he’s selective in who he faces, he can probably milk his titles for another 2-3 years. But he should stay away from fighting Groves again because he clearly has Froch’s number the same way that Dirrell and Ward did. The rematch would be even more one-sided because Groves now knows how to beat Froch, and he’d fix the few mistakes that he made from last time.



Comments are closed.