By William Mackay: I’ve looked at this fight every which way and I can’t help but come to the conclusion that WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (24-0, 19 KOs) is going to be beaten by his number #1 American challenger Jermain Taylor (28-2-1, 1) KOs) on April 25th at the Foxwoods Resort and Casino, in Mashantucket, Connecticut. Taylor, 30, has essentially everything going for him in this fight – experience, speed, power, youth, boxing ability and best of all, home field advantage.
Any one of these factors alone would make it very tough on Froch to try and win the fight. However, when you factor all of them in together it comes out to a defeat for Froch. I doubt that Taylor will be able to knock Froch out, because Jermain hasn’t had a knockout in quite some time and Froch seems to have a rather sturdy chin.
But, I can’t see Froch having the speed or the boxing ability to handle Taylor’s hand speed or overall skills. Froch, 31, comes into this fight having fought essentially one quality opponent during his entire seven year boxing career in Jean Pascal.
Froch only recently fought Pascal, beating him by a close 12-round decision in December. Froch didn’t look at all that spectacular against an opponent that mostly punched with open gloves and showed only limited boxing skills.
The super middleweight division has always had a reputation for being a place for fighters that aren’t good enough to make the middleweight class, and I have to agree with that a little. Pascal is a very unfinished product and a win over him isn’t that big of a deal, particularly when it was a close fight.
Taylor appears to be a fighter a level above Pascal, and Froch at this time. Froch doesn’t have the experience to beat a fighter as good as Taylor and really has to hope that he can somehow get lucky and knock Jermain out with something big.
Froch doesn’t have quite the power or the skills that Kelly Pavlik has, so it’s going to be a much harder task for him to beat someone like Taylor. In his past two fights, Taylor has looked really good and has shown a lot of improvement in fixing the mistakes he made in his first fight with Pavlik.
Although Taylor lost by a close 12 round decision in their rematch in February 2008, Taylor looked much improved by boxing more from the outside and using his hand speed to get the better of Pavlik. I thought that Taylor deserved to get the win in the rematch, but the judges’ thought differently and gave Pavlik the win. However, Taylor looked very tough on that night and hard to beat for anyone.
In his last fight, Taylor fought sensationally in defeating former IBF super middleweight champion Jeff Lacy by a 12-round decision in November 2008. Taylor jabbed Lacy from the outside and got the better of him with fast combinations. More or less, Taylor showed off the kind of skills that he’ll be using to beat Froch on April 25th.
I don’t really know what Froch can do to get the win over Taylor. I’d recommend that Froch try to throw faster punches if at all possible, because he’s got to find away to get his shots in without getting nailed with three or four fast shots from Taylor.
This is what happened with Bernard Hopkins in his two fights with Taylor, both of which Jermain won by 12 round decisions. Hopkins would attempt to throw a shot, but he was so slow that even though he would land the punch, Taylor would fire back three-punch combinations and basically beat Hopkins back to the outside.
If Hopkins had elected to try and stay in range of Taylor, he would have been barbequed by Jermain with sizzling shots. Hopkins knew better than to take that kind of foolish risk and skedaddled to the outside where it was safer.
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