By Dave Lahr: The latest word is that the prospective fight between WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (24-0, 19 KOs) and former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Jermain Taylor (28-2-1, 17 KOs) is almost near the completion stages of negotiations. The fight should take place in mid April at a still to be determined location. Taylor, 30, is making only his second fight in the super middleweight division after losing his last two fights at middleweight to Kelly Pavlik.
Despite his lack of experience as a super middleweight, Taylor finds himself ranked high at number #1 in the World Boxing Council. Froch, 31, defeated Jean Pascal by a 12-round unanimous decision in December to win the vacant WBC title.
This is a fight that on paper Froch in which holds many of the advantages. Froch has great power, excellent stamina, good height and reach, and tends to apply a lot of pressure on his opponents in his fights. Whereas, Taylor in recent years has had a problem with stamina, has seemingly lost power on his shots, and stresses out when pressured hard.
Froch doesn’t let up, bringing his heavy pressure and heavy shots for a full 12 rounds. Taylor has a had a problem fading in the later rounds of seven out of his last seven fights dating back to his first victory over Bernard Hopkins in July 2005.
Though Taylor has made some adjustments in his style of fighting in the past couple of bouts, he hasn’t faced anyone like Froch, who will be going at Taylor hard and making him fight and expend energy. There’s a danger here for Taylor that with the pressure that Froch is putting on him that Taylor will punch himself out like he did in his fight with Pavlik.
The problem for Taylor is that once he punches himself out, unlike other fighters, he tends to stay exhausted for many rounds later. That’s not a good thing, not with the kind of pressure that Froch will be putting on him. Froch won’t lessen up if he gets Taylor tired, and will if anything start putting on more pressure, backing him up and delivering some tremendous shots. If Taylor’s chin hasn’t improved from his 7th round stoppage loss to Pavlik in September 2007, we may be seeing another knockout loss for Taylor.
Froch is vulnerable as well, mostly due to his poor defense and wide open style of fighting. However, with Froch his outstanding chin and warrior heart seem to make up for his lack of defense, enabling him to make up for his shoddy defense. Froch doesn’t use much head or lateral movement to get out of the way of punches, but so far he hasn’t really needed to.
Taylor has the speed advantage in this fight, but so did Pascal with Froch, and that didn’t stop Carl from wearing him down. Certainly, Froch was hit with some huge shots by Pascal but it didn’t stop Froch one bit from coming forward and delivering his heavy shots.
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