By Eric Thomas: The super middleweight clash between World Boxing Council champion Carl Froch (24-0, 19 KOs) are close to being finalized according to the latest news from around the boxing world for April 18th or April 25th. Reportedly, the deal is 95% completed and will possibly be taking place in New York at Madison Square Garden. Froch, 31, recently defeated Canadian Jean Pascal by a 12-round unanimous decision in December to win the vacant WBC super middleweight title in Nottingham.
Taylor, 30, is coming off of an impressive 12-round white wash of former IBF super middleweight title holder Jeff Lacy in November.
Taylor, who lost his WBC/WBO middleweight titles to Kelly Pavlik in a 7th round TKO loss in September 2007, will have a big speed advantage over the much slower Froch in their upcoming fight. Taylor, always a fighter with top notch speed and power, hasn’t lost anything since moving up from the middleweight division in November 2008 for his fight with Lacy.
Before moving up in weight, Taylor had struggled in making weight for the middleweight division, having to strip off a lot of water including muscle in order to make it at the proper weight for his last two fights with Pavlik in 2007 and 2008. Taking the weight off left Taylor partially weakened, and unable to fight at his optimal level. After his second loss to Pavlik, a close 12-round unanimous decision loss in February 2008, Taylor chose to move up to the super middleweight division rather than directing his energies into regaining his lost middleweight titles.
Froch, 31, is a former Commonwealth (British Empire) and BBBofC British super middleweight champion, has been one of the top super middleweights in the UK for some time. For a long time, he had been trying to get a fight with Joe Calzaghe, the long time WBO super middleweight champion, but Calzaghe instead decided to retire rather than fight the tall, powerful Froch.
Naturally, this left Froch feeling a little bitter and he let Calzaghe know about it after Joe retired, saying that Calzaghe was no legend. This upset many fans in the UK, many who see Calzaghe as an icon and someone to be revered for having retired with an unbeaten 46-0 record. Froch, however, felt that with his unbeaten record and high percentage of knockouts, he should have been given a shot at fighting Calzaghe.
Instead, Froch had to be content with making his own name for himself, which he’s already started to do by defeating Canadian Jean Pascal in an exciting 12-round unanimous decision in December. Froch took Pascal’s blazing fast shots all fight long, eventually wearing him down with his high pressure and power shots and coming out on top with a hard earned decision victory.
Froch has his work ahead of him against Taylor, however. Like Pascal, Taylor is very fast with his hands but in this case, Taylor’s two inches taller than Pascal, has a much better jab and is more of a classic boxer than him. It would seem that Froch’s only chance at beating Taylor is if he can hurt him like Pavlik did and perhaps knock him down a couple of times.
It’s possible that Froch could knock Taylor out if he can stay on top of him the way that Pavlik did, but he’s going to have to keep the pressure on him continuously, because if he allows Taylor to box from the outside like he did in the 2nd fight with Pavlik, then I can see Taylor winning by a decision. Taylor has probably learned his lesson from the Pavlik defeat and won’t be trying to slug it out with a fighter like Froch, whose fighting style is very similar to Pavlik except much more busier.
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