Something nice about this picture….. pic.twitter.com/yN66tAhuDM

— Carl Froch (@Carl_Froch) January 18, 2015

By Scott Gilfoid: If there was any doubts that IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch (33-2, 24 KOs) will soon be hanging up the gloves, I think he may have answered it today with his tweet showing a pair of gloves hanging up. You can read that to be a message that the 37-year-old Froch may be retiring from the sport rather than fighting on and risking his hide against talents like the Dirrell brothers and Andre Ward.

Froch still seems interested in facing former WBC middleweight belt holder Julio Cesar Chavez Jr despite the fact that the Mexican fighter hasn’t fought in almost a year. Chavez Jr looked terrible in his last two fights against Brian Vera, and it’s been three years since Chavez Jr put on an impressive performance against Andy Lee.

If Froch does get out of the sport now it’ll be similar to how Joe Calzaghe bowed out of the sport just when Ward and the Dirrell brothers emerged on the scene to give him a real challenge after Calzaghe dominated a horrible super middleweight division during a weak period where the talent was incredibly poor.

What was interesting about Calzaghe is that he retired pretty much still fully in his prime, which some boxing fans found strange. Froch is kind of in the same situation. He hasn’t started to lose his ability, yet he’s talking about retiring rather than sticking around to face the likes of James DeGale, Andre Dirrell, Anthony Dirrell, Andre Ward, Sergy Kovalev, Bernard Hopkins and Adonis Stevenson. In other words, real threats to beating Froch, unlike Chavez Jr.

“Professional boxing is a business first and foremost, let’s not forget that,” Froch said via the Dailymail.co.uk. “After knocking out (George) Groves I was talking about the Chavez fight happening. It’s nearly there and I’m very optimistic that Eddie Hearn will make an announcement very soon. This fight will take me to Las Vegas. Between beating Mikkel Kessler and speaking about Chavez, I’ve had the two epic fights with George Groves.”

Groves is the unproven fighter that Froch has faced in his last two fights. Froch merely exposed Groves as being a fighter who didn’t have the chin to stand in there with him. Before the Froch fight, Groves had never really fought a top tier guy.

It’s unclear why Froch feels that the Groves fights were epic when it would appear that Froch merely beat a domestic level super middleweight and not a high caliber fighter like Ward and the Dirrell brothers.

I can see Froch getting excited about beating those guys, but for him to be bragging about his wins over Groves, it just seems odd and out of place. Beating Groves merely shows that Froch could beat a guy a level above Paul Smith, and I don’t rate Smith at all.

I think Froch is going to be sadly disappointed with the interest in his fight against Chavez Jr by the boxing public. It’s a fight that is three years too late. Froch seems to be stuck in a time warp that has taken him back to 2012 when Chavez Jr was still relevant. Since then, Chavez Jr was beaten by Sergio Martinez in a one-sided fight and he’s been kind of the invisible man ever since.