Groves’ trainer wants to stop Froch from throwing rabbit punches

By Boxing News - 05/20/2014 - Comments

froch454545By Scott Gilfoid: George Groves’ trainer Paddy Fitzpatrick wants to make sure that a good referee is assigned to the May 31st rematch between Groves and IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch (32-2, 23 KO’s) in order to keep Froch from getting away with throwing rabbit punches all night. For casual boxing fans who have no clue what a rabbit punch is, it’s a when a fighter illegally hits his opponent in the back of the head with a punch.

It’s against the rules to hit a fighter with rabbit punches due to the danger involved for the fighter getting hit with those kinds of shots. Fitzpatrick wants to make sure that Froch doesn’t hit Groves in the back of the head during their clinches in order to try and gain an advantage or to make him hesitant about clinching. It’s the referees’ job to control clinching, but there really wasn’t a lot of tying up by Groves last November. He fought a pretty clean fight for the most part.

“I am extremely concerned about the fouling of Carl Froch in this fight. We need a strong referee to prevent what he has always done,” Fitzpatrick said to the telegraph.co.uk “When he [Froch] gets emotionally involved, he fouls with shots behind the head, he uses rabbit punches and he barges into his opponent with his shoulder and forearm. Barging a man in the shoulder I can live with.”

Froch’s management reportedly said no to IBF offering American referee Jack Reiss to work the fight. Reiss is a known as a tough referee that doesn’t allow fouling. He would have likely have put a stop to any fouling from either fighter right away once it first occurred. Reiss wouldn’t have taken a Laissez-faire approach to rabbit punches being thrown like what we saw last November in their previous fight.

Just how many times the appointed referees can be rejected by either fighter’s management is unknown. What we don’t want to see is the IBF offering up referee after referee with them getting shot down until one is agreed on that won’t lift a finger to stop rabbit punching or other kinds of fouls.



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