By Scott Gilfoid: Matchroom Sport promoter Eddie Hearn isn’t quite sure if his fighter super middleweight Carl Froch (33-2, 24 KOs) will continue his career or not, but if he does, Hearn is hoping that the Nottingham fighter will wrap up his career fighting George Groves (21-2, 16 KOs) in front of 80,000 fans at Wembley Stadium in London, UK.
For a third fight between Froch and Groves to take place, it will obviously require that the 27-year-old Groves defeat WBC super middleweight champion Badou Jack (19-1-1, 12 KOs) in their fight in August or September of this year.
If Groves captures the WBC 168lb strap, then Hearn can realize his dreams and get a third fight between Froch and Groves. Froch has already knocked Groves out twice, once in 2013 and another time in 2014. I don’t know why Hearn thinks that British boxing fans would want to plunk down money to see a third bout between them, whether live or on pay-per-view, given that it seems painfully obvious at this point that Froch has Groves’ number.
“If he [Froch] wants to fight again, he will. If he doesn’t, what a way to go out last time against Groves in front of 80,000 at Wembley,” Hearn said to ESPN.co.uk.
I don’t know about you but I see another Froch-Groves fight as little more than a money grab rather than a fight that would be good for the boxing public or interesting. It would make Froch look really, really bad if he chose another fight against Groves rather than facing Gennady Golovkin.
It doesn’t look like Froch fancies the job in fighting the powerful Kazakhstan star. If Froch did, he would have already jumped at the chance to fight him. I mean, Froch was chomping at the bit to get a chance to fight the struggling Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. this year before Froch suffered an elbow injury training, and Chavez Jr. was stopped by Andrzej Fonfara. But Groves would be an equal replacement for Chavez Jr. in talent, so Froch would get a safe fight and go out in style in stopping Groves in front of however many fans that would show up to see it at Wembley Stadium.
Golovkin is willing to move up in weight to fight Froch without a catch-weight, and he’s also willing to fight him in the UK. We haven’t heard whether Golovkin would have to agree to fight Froch in Nottingham, UK, Froch’s hometown, but I don’t think that would be enough of a deterrent to throw Golovkin off the fight like it did with Andre Ward. If they don’t want the fight – and I get the feeling that they don’t – then they’ll need to use another strategy to turn Golovkin away. I don’t think Golovkin is afraid of being potentially robbed in Nottingham.
With Golovkin’s kind of power, he would force the judges to be just spectators, and the same with the referee. If Froch chose to turn it into an MMA roughhouse fight filled with fouling, body slams and rabbit punches, I doubt that would bother Golovkin too much. With his punching power, he’d likely be even more motivated to KO Froch with a single shot to the head to end the rough stuff once and for all if the referee just stands idly by watching the fouling without lifting a finger to stop it. The only way I could see Froch and Hearn getting Golovkin and his promoter Tom Loeffler to lose interest in the fight is if they started talking about a purse split of 90-10 in Froch’s favor. Yeah, if they come up with some outrageous purse split, then of course I see Golovkin not taking the fight, but other than that, I think he would be willing to jump through whatever hoops he had to in order to make the fight a reality.
“There’s also the possibility of a big domestic fight against James DeGale for a world title to consider, but my gut feeling is that he will not fight again,” Hearn said.
Hearn promotes DeGale, so that kind of explains why he’s pushing for a Froch-DeGale fight. It would be an in house fight for Hearn, and there would less chance of Froch being knocked cold because DeGale isn’t a huge puncher by any means.
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