By Scott Gilfoid: George Groves (19-1, 15 KO’s) acknowledges that IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch (32-2, 23 KO’s) can take a pretty good shot every now and then. However, Groves doesn’t think Froch is going to be able to stand up to the repeated right hands that he’s going to be shoving down his gullet. Groves thinks that Froch will initially be able to take his shots, but eventually he’s going to succumb to his power and hit the canvas for the 10 count in their rematch on May 31st at the Wembley Stadium in London, UK.
“He’s brave in that he takes a lot of shots but he’s not a warrior,” Groves told the London Evening Standard. “He’s never had much of a technique to fall back on and he’s slowed. He can take a shot but not repeatedly from me. I wish him luck but he’s not showing me anything. I’m a faster fighter, I have faster hands and a better defence. It’s only going to end one way.”
So there it is. The fight is only going to go one way with Groves taking Froch out with repeated shots. Now it’s up to Groves to go out and prove that he can back up his tough talk by doing it in the ring against Froch.
We already know what happened in their prior fight last November. Groves put Froch down in the 1st round with a crushing right hand to the chin. Froch got to his feet looking like a drunken sailor, and was surprisingly the referee Howard John Foster let the fight continue despite the fact that Froch was on unsteady legs. A lot of referees would have halted the fight given the way Froch was swaying back and forth.
Groves will need to throw more shots if he’s going to stop Froch. He’s going to need to avoid clinching with him, because Froch was nailing him with punches to the back of the head in the clinches with the referee doing zero about it. I’d like to think that the referee that works in their rematch will make sure that it’s a clean fight, but I doubt it. I see this as another one of those anything goes type of fights. If that’s the case then Groves is going to need to fight fire with fire to get Froch’s respect. I still wouldn’t recommend Groves clinching with Froch, because there’s too much of a chance that he’ll get brained with a punch to the back of the head.
Where Groves got in trouble last time was when he would stand in one place and cover up like a punching bag. He did that a number of times in the fight, and each time he did it, Froch would rush him and throw nonstop shots until Groves had the sense enough to move away. That was really dumb of Groves to do that. He should have watched Andre Dirrell’s fight against Froch and saw how he never let Froch have a stationary target to get his combinations off.
Lucian Bute also made a mistake of being stationary for Froch, and it cost him the fight with Froch stopping him in the 5th. The only way Groves can get away with being stationary is if he’s unloading on Froch with a flurry of shots. Groves should immediately start moving once he’s thrown his shots because he can’t stand around to admire his work.
It would be an easy fight for Groves if he knew how to fight on the inside, because then all he’d have to do is smother Froch the same way Andre Ward did in his win over him, and not let him get any leverage on his shots. Ward totally smothered Froch’s offense in their fight in the Super Six finals in beating him with ease. Groves can’t do that because he would need to work with trainer Virgil Hunter to learn how to fight on the inside, and that obviously isn’t happening.
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