By Scott Gilfoid: While meeting with challenger George Groves on Sky Sports’ “Froch vs. Groves the Gloves are off,” IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch yanked Groves over the table while Groves was giving him what appeared to be a hard handshake. Groves briefly pulled Froch to him in giving him the old iron handshake, but Froch responded by yanking Groves hard to where he was almost falling on the table. It was pretty shocking to see a harmless handshake being turned into what could have resulted in an injury.
After the incident, Froch looked at Groves and smiled at him, as if he were satisfied with what had just took place.
This is so, so sad that the fighters can’t even shake hands without one of them almost getting his arm torn out of the sockets. I guess Groves learned his lesson about shaking Froch’s hand from that incident.
It’s too bad because Froch had done such a good job up until this little meeting with Johnny Nelson in controlling his anger, but he was definitely off the leash during the session. Froch was practically spitting venom, while Groves was his cool, calm self. Groves showed little emotion throughout the meeting except after he was pulled over the table by Froch. At this point, Groves looked at Froch with a question mark look on his face, trying to figure out what brought on this sudden surge of aggressiveness.
I really, really hope that there’s no more extracurricular activity between the two fighters because the last thing we need is one or both of them to get injured before they even get in the ring. It might be all good sport, buy you can’t have them playing push and pull with one another before a fight that has so much on the line. Groves is pretty young at 26, so he can handle stuff like this, but you never know. I once had my shoulder injured when someone did the same thing with me while shaking my hand, and my shoulder wasn’t right for at least a year.
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