By Scott Gilfoid: WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch (33-2, 24 KOs) took a lot of heat today from boxing fans when he decided to give up his IBF 168 pound title without a battle by vacating it and giving it back to the International Boxing Federation instead of getting inside the ring and defending it like most champions do by facing his obligatory IBF mandatory challenger James DeGale.

Some fans think Froch did this move in order to avoid an embarrassing loss.

Froch’s fellow countryman Paul Smith doesn’t see it as Froch being cowardly. Instead, he feels that Froch did the right thing by bypassing what would have been a tough fight for him against DeGale in order for Froch to face Julio Cesar Chavez Jr later this year.

“He [Froch] certainly isn’t the coward we heard someone calling him this morning, that’s for sure,” Smith told Skysports.com. “He wants to go to Las Vegas and fight Julio Cesar Chavez Jnr, as we know. He [Froch] is carrying a bit of an injury and the IBF are not going to put his mandatory back any further.”

I don’t think boxing fans are rating Froch as a coward. The fans that are coming down on Froch see him as ducking a fighter in a fight that would have a 50-50 outcome. In other words, Froch walked away from a fight that he could lose in order to face someone that he has a good chance of beating in the slow as molasses and easy to hit Chavez Jr instead. I mean, if Froch had walked away from the DeGale fight in order to face someone like Gennady Golovkin, Andre Ward or Andre Dirrell, then I don’t think it would be a big deal at all.

No one could say anything because those guys are relevant fighters who are at the top of their respective divisions. But for Froch to walk away from the DeGale fight in order to face Chavez Jr, that just rubs some boxing fans the wrong way.

It just makes Froch look like he’s being carefully matched in order to keep him winning. You can’t really put this on Froch’s promoter Eddie Hearn, because he’s up for matching Froch against DeGale, although he doesn’t seem eager to let Froch fight Ward again.

I also seriously doubt that Hearn would be excited about a Froch-Dirrell fight. That’s kind of the same as Froch fighting Ward. Froch is the one that wants the Chavez Jr fight, and that’s kind of odd, given how inactive Chavez Jr has been and how truly terrible he looked when he stepped it up a level against Sergio Martinez in 2012.

Paul Smith (35-4, 20 KOs) will be fighting WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (41-4, 28 Kos) in a second and hopefully final fight between them on February 21st at the O2 World Arena, Kreuzberg, in Berlin, Germany. Smith was beaten by Abraham last year by a 12 round decision, but after complaining about losing the fight over and over again, Smith was given a rematch. I saw their fight and I had Abraham winning 10 out 12 rounds.

I didn’t see any controversy at all with the decision, and I think it’s pointless for them to have a rematch. I mean, I can understand why Abraham might want to face Smith again rather than a dangerous opponent that could potentially beat him like Gilberto Ramirez. This is like a title milking fight for Abraham, because he gets to fight the same guy that he already proved that he’s better than.