By Scott Gilfoid: George Groves (19-1, 15 KO’s) sees IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch (32-2, 23 KO’s) as having a bad case of the nerves as the two of them get nearer to their fight date on May 31st at the Wembley Stadium in London, UK. Groves thinks the punishment that he dished out to Froch last time they fought in November of last year has the 36-year-old fighter worried about the rematch, and he believes that Froch isn’t relishing the thought of having to get in the ring with the younger 26-year-old Groves again.
Groves expects to put an end to Froch’s career on May 31st by beating him in front of a packed house at the Wembley Stadium in front of a hostile crowd.
“The last place Carl wants to be on the planet right now is back in the ring with me,” Groves said. “He can’t hold it together, he must be petrified. His career is pretty much over…I wish him the best of luck, but this is the end for him. I can’t wait to be world champion.”
Groves says he still wants neutral officials for the fight. However, it’s unclear whether that’ll happen. You’ve got to figure that the referee will be British, and at least one of the judges.
Groves was well on his way to beating Froch last November in their fight in Manchester when Froch bumped Groves to the ropes with a nice shoulder bump. Froch then threw a mad flurry of punches with only one of the punches landing cleanly. At this point the referee Howard John Foster jumped in and halted the fight.
It’s too bad there wasn’t an instant replay of the stoppage for the officials to look at and overturn the stoppage right then and there, because if Foster had been able to look what actually happened with the stoppage, he’d have seen that Groves was bumped into the ropes and that the punches that Froch threw were missing. Other sports have instant replay to overturn controversial falls, and it helps those sports in a big way most of the time. The Groves-Froch I fight definitely could have used instant replay because it would have likely saved Groves from a loss.
If Froch loses this fight to Groves, then it probably will be over for Froch. I don’t see where he could go from there unless they wanted to weasel a third fight between them, but I think the IBF and WBA would both have something to say about that because there are contenders with those sanctioning bodies waiting their turn for a shot at those titles. You can’t have Froch and Groves fighting each other endlessly year after year without letting someone like Brandon Gonzales to get a shot at the belts.
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