By Scott Gilfoid: Last night HBO displayed a quote from IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch in which he said that he wanted no part of fighting WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (30-0, 27 KOs), and that he’s someone that should be avoided or steered around.
HBO commentator Max Kellerman tried to see the comment in a positive light by saying that Froch may have meant that he would avoid mixing it up with him if he actually fought him, but he wasn’t quite sure if that’s what he meant or not.
Kellerman thought it was interesting that a fighter as big as the 6’1” Froch, with his steel-chin, would be hesitant to fight and/or mix it up with a guy that fights in a division below him. Froch is three inches taller than Golovkin and definitely heavier, so why wouldn’t Froch want to fight him?
Here’s the quote from Froch that HBO showed last night: “Just swerve Golovkin like the plague. He punches like a mule. I don’t need to be in with him. Dangerous fight.”
Kellerman might read this to mean how Froch would choose to fight Golovkin if he were to face him in the ring, but I see it more as a case of Froch flat out saying that he doesn’t want to fight Golovkin, period. If that’s the case, it’s so, so sad. I mean, Froch hasn’t faced a quality guy in the ring since his fight against Andre Ward in the Super Six Tournament, and he lost that fight. Lately, Froch has been beating an inexperienced fighter with a shaky chin in George Groves. Before that, he defeated Mikkel Kessler, who has seen better days and who no longer fights on a regular basis.
Kessler has become more or less a part time boxer in the same way that Oscar De La Hoya did in the final years of his career. Kessler has fought 4 times in the last 4 years. That’s not exactly active, is it? Froch’s win Lucian Bute means nothing now that we’ve seen Bute struggle and lose against a very average Jean Pascal, and struggle against Denis Grachev. Yusaf Mack, a fighter who had been knocked by Tavoris Cloud, wasn’t a spectacular win for Froch either. So why wouldn’t Froch fight a live body in Golovkin?
Kellerman said “To be fair to Carl Froch, he was asked how would you fight Golovkin. So you can read that same quote that he would swerve Golovkin that he would stay away from him. You can’t get in there with him, meaning on the inside. It’s unclear what he meant. Either way, either Carl Froch just said he doesn’t want to fight Golovkin at all or he just said that even though he’s a big, tough, sturdy punching super middleweight, there’s a 160 pounder, who if he fought him, he would be very, very careful. Either way, that’s who Gennady Golovkin is.”
Yeah, I guess twist Froch’s quote to mean that he was describing how he would fight Golovkin and not that he doesn’t want to fight him at all, but I think Froch is basically saying he doesn’t want any part of Golovkin. How else do you interpret Froch saying this “Just swerve Golovkin like the plague…I don’t need to be in with him. Dangerous fight.”
I read that to mean that Froch doesn’t want to fight Golovkin. Whatever the case, it’s neither here nor there now, because Golovkin said last night that he doesn’t want to move up to super middleweight. He says he’s going to clear out the middleweight division first. So unless Froch moves down to 160 to take the fight with Golovkin, which I don’t see happening in this lifetime, a Froch-Golovkin fight will never take place.
Froch is always talking about having good control over his body and his training, so I don’t see why he couldn’t move down in weight to fight Golovkin if he wanted his first real test since his loss to Ward in 2011. But Froch has a good thing going with him fighting the likes of Groves, Bute, Mack, 35-year-old Kessler, and now probably James DeGale. Why mess things up by having him fight Golovkin and possibly getting knocked out within 3 rounds like we saw with Daniel Geale last night.
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