By Eric Thomas: It was expected that former World Boxing Organization super middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe wouldn’t be interested in fighting WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch, and now it’s academic after Calzaghe came publicly yesterday and said that he will not be coming out of retirement to fight Froch. For many people in the boxing world, this isn’t exactly unexpected news, because Calzaghe seemed to have made up his mind that he was through with the sport when he retired recently.
Calzaghe certainly could have stuck around and made big money to fight rematches with Bernard Hopkins or Roy Jones Jr., but Calzaghe was tired of boxing and didn’t want to continue fight. Froch, who defeated Jermain Taylor last Saturday night by a 12th round TKO, isn’t ready to give up his pursuit of a big money fight with Calzaghe and called him out immediately after stopping Taylor.
However, I’m not sure if Froch was aware of how lucky he was in getting the win over Taylor, because Froch would have lost the fight if Taylor had stayed on his feet for another 14 seconds of the fight. Additionally, Froch was knocked down in the 3rd round by Taylor and beaten in most of the first six rounds of the fight.
In the end, Froch got the win, but he failed to impress many boxing fans around the world, and probably least of all Calzaghe. Froch was under the impression that the win over Taylor would perhaps get Calzaghe to change his mind about not wanting to fight him.
I’m not sure how Froch could twisted things in his mind to even consider a notion like that, because there are arguably better super middleweights than Taylor, fighters such as Lucian Bute, Mikkel Kessler, Andre Ward, Andre Dirrell, Allan Green, and Librado Andrade. The fact that Froch had to struggle against Taylor and needed a last second knockout to get the victory doesn’t exactly make him an attractive opponent for a fighter like Calzaghe.
Froch looked out of his league against Taylor in the first half of the fight, and took a lot of hard shots from the quicker and surprisingly more powerful Taylor. Luckily for Froch, Taylor tired out fast in the fight and had nothing at all left in the final six rounds of the bout.
It was as if Taylor had hit a wall physically after the 6th round and was only able to throw jabs for the remainder of the fight. It was at this point that Froch was able to get into the fight and come on to win many of the round, although not always convincingly.
If Froch wants to make a mark in the sport – and perhaps get even with Calzaghe for ignoring his requests for a fight – Froch needs to try and clean the table by taking on Kessler, Bute, Ward, Karoly Balzsay, Dirrell, Andrade and Green.
If Froch can beat all or most of those fighters, it won’t matter whether Calzaghe fought him or not. Froch will have made a ton of money and gone a long ways in making a name for himself in boxing.
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