By Scott Gilfoid: Last Monday, WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch said he wouldn’t be vacating his WBA title despite him being ordered by the World Boxing Association to start negotiations for a fight between him and WBA Super World middleweight champion Andre Ward.
Froch said he won’t be giving up his last remaining world title, and he dared Ward to come over to the UK to fight him at the Forest Ground in Nottingham. Froch doesn’t think that Ward likes to travel outside of the U.S, and he seems to be expecting him not to take the fight.
It’ll be really interesting to see if Ward calls Froch’s bluff by agreeing to go over and fight Froch in the UK. The question is if Ward does this will Froch quickly vacate his WBA title rather than getting in the ring with Ward for a potential second defeat.
Froch was beaten in their fight in 2011, even though Ward was fighting him with just one hand. Ward came into the fight with a fractured left hand, which forced him to use just his right hand for much of the fight. Ward did use his left, but he wasn’t able to get the power on his shots due to the pain from the fracture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPW5OW5jJ54
“I fought him [Andre Ward] in the US,’ Froch said via the Dailymail.co.uk. ‘Now it’s only right that he comes over here. To be a truly great champion you have to box overseas. Ward needs to be forced to travel out of his comfort zone. I dare him. He will discover that I’m a very different animal here than I was that night on the Boardwalk.”
Froch says he was bummed out in being in the United States around Christmas time the last time he fought Ward. Froch wasn’t happy away from home around Christmas, and he wasn’t happy in fighting Ward in Atlantic City.
I don’t see how things would be different with Froch fighting in the UK rather than the United States against Ward. I mean, Froch looked equally poor in his fight against the talented Andre Dirrell, and that fight took place in Nottingham.
The only difference was that two of the judges gave Froch a controversial 12 round split decision win. If Froch wasn’t talented enough to beat a one-handed Ward in the U.S, then why in the heck would anything be difference in the UK?
Unless Froch is hoping to get another controversial win like the one he got over Dirrell, I don’t see how the venue and the country would make any difference at all. The fact of the matter is Ward simply was the better fighter. They could have staged the fight in Froch’s living room with his family and friends as the spectators, and I don’t see the outcome being any different.
Ward could really throw a wrench into Froch’s plans by agreeing to fight him in the UK. The fans could then see if Froch was on the level when he dared Ward to fight him in the UK, or if Froch was merely flapping his gums in hopes of winning points with the fans.
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