Froch vs. Taylor In April

By Boxing News - 02/04/2009 - Comments

froch4633By Dave Lahr: According to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, former middleweight champion Jermain Taylor (28-2-1, 17 KOs) will be taking on WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (24-0, 19 KOs) in April. The dates of the fight will be on either April 18th or the 25th, with the site still unknown. Froch, 31, recently defeated Jean Pascal in December to win the vacant World Boxing Council super middleweight title in a fight that was a candidate for fight of the year honors.

Taylor, 30, recently defeated Jeff Lacy by a lopsided 12-round unanimous decision in the WBC Super Middleweight Title Eliminator in Nashville, Tennessee. Before that, Taylor had lost back to back fights (including his WBC/WBO middleweight title) to Kelly Pavlik in 2007 and 2008.

Jermain’s trainer, Ozell Nelson, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that the Taylor-Froch fight will be taking place in April.

Taylor, ranked #1 in the WBC, had been looking at a number of potential opponents from Bernard Hopkins to Allan Green, but at the end of the day it was Froch’s belt which was the factor in Jermain taking the fight with him. The bout will be shown on Showtime cable network and will likely take place in the U.S rather than England.

This bout matches up a scenario strikingly similar to the Taylor-Pavlik bout with Froch, a fighter known for his excellent power and his heavy pressure, in that Froch likes to come after his opponents hard from the start of the fight until the very end.

If this fight had taken place before Froch’s bout with Pascal, I would be skeptical about Froch’s chances of winning the fight, because of Taylor’s much superior hand speed in comparison to Froch. However, Froch dealt remarkably well with the fast hands of Pascal, taking his quick flurries and walking through the shots to land big power shots.

In the 2nd half of the bout, Froch gradually wore Pascal down with heavy pressure and ended up taking the fight on a close 12-round decision. Taylor, though, probably won’t try and mix it up with Froch much, focusing instead on boxing him from the outside and landing an occasional flurry of shots.

Taylor learned a big lesson from his 7th round TKO loss to Pavlik in September 2007, and has since used much more movement and jabs in his two fights since that loss. It helped him come close to defeating Pavlik in the rematch in February 2008, and worked well in Taylor’s easy 12-round decision over Lacy in November.



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