By Scott Gilfoid: After talking about wanting to possibly face the challenge of fighting undefeated WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs), Britain’s Carl Froch (33-2, 24 KOs) has seemingly disappeared into the woodwork. Froch has not said a word lately about whether he’ll take the fight or not, and boxing fans are left to wonder what happened to him.
Froch said he was going to make his decision about whether to retire or not by the first week of June. Well, the first week of this month has come and gone and Froch is missing in action.
About the only thing you can think is maybe Froch doesn’t like his chances against the talented Golovkin. I mean, there’s a big difference from beating the likes of George Groves, Yusuf Mack, and a past his prime Mikkel Kessler and an aging Lucian Bute than there is in fighting a guy like Golovkin. The guys I just mentioned are the fighters that Froch has padded his record with since he was whipped by Andre Ward in the Super Six tournament four years ago.
It would be such a pity if Froch dodges the Golovkin fight by choosing to retire now rather than to get inside the ring and take the risky fight. Fans want to see it, and it would be the perfect sendoff for Froch to retire on. At least it would give Froch a worthy opponent for his last fight. I mean, I think Groves is a lousy last opponent if this is going to be the last one of Froch’s career.
“I lead by example,” Froch said via birminghammail.co.uk. “I never turned down an opponent. Boxing has got to make business sense, but I’ve never been motivated by money. I’ve always been motivated by the sport. I’ve never asked how much I’m being paid because I don’t box for money.”
I don’t know how Froch can say that he doesn’t box for money when he’s also saying that it’s got to make business sense for him. Doesn’t that mean Froch chooses opponents based on how much money they can make him? If you’re talking about the fights needing to make business sense, I see that as code for you need to make sure the fight can make a lot of money. I’m not sure that Froch understands what he was talking about when he opened his mouth to discuss the subject of him not being motivated by money.
Froch might not openly turn down an opponent, but the fact that he’s not fighting certain guys suggests that he’s silently turned them down. He might not have officially opened his yap to say ‘I’m not fighting so and so’, but if he’s not fighting these guys then it tells me he’s turned them down. I can think of more than a few fighters that Froch hasn’t agreed to fight.
We haven’t see Froch fight Golovkin, Andre Dirrell [again], Anthony Dirrell, Sergey Kovalev, and Adonis Stevenson. I’m sure that all of these guys would jump at the chance to fight Froch. You can add James DeGale, George Groves [again], and Sakio Bika. Those guys would all like to fight Froch. I bet even Artur Beterbiev would like to fight Froch.
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