By Jim Dower: Unbeaten World Boxing Council super middleweight champion Carl Froch (25-0, 20 KOs) came out on Steve Bunce’s Boxing Hour show today, saying that he wants to fight a unification bout with IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute, a Romanian who now lives in Canada. Additionally, Froch is also interested in fighting WBA super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler, as well as WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik and former middleweight/light heavyweight title holder Bernard Hopkins.
However, Froch feels that the bout with Bute may possibly be his next fight if everything works out alright. Froch says that progress is being made with Bute’s people towards a potential fight in the near future. Froch is less optimistic, though, about a fight with Bernard Hopkins, commenting that Hopkins “wants you to take peanuts” and wants the lion’s share of the profits while offering only a much smaller portion to his opponents.
Froch isn’t willing to accept a deal like that, so Hopkins isn’t really a good option for him. Besides that, Hopkins has no title, which makes him less appealing to Froch. Above all, Froch only wants to take the big fights and isn’t looking to merely defend his title against one of his mandatory challengers.
Froch believes that he has only has several more years left in his boxing career, and wants to make the most out of it while he still can. Froch’s promoter has already spoken to Kessler’s people in Germany. However, nothing was ironed out conclusively from the meeting. Ideally, Froch would like to fight Kessler, but that bout will likely be a tougher fight to arrange than a bout with another fighter like Bute.
Froch, 31, is coming off one of his biggest wins of his career with his 12th round knockout over former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Jermain Taylor on April 25th. Down on points going into the 12th round, Froch attacked Taylor with huge power shots, hurting him badly and knocking him to the canvas with a powerful right hand.
Froch would then finish Taylor off a short while later with a barrage of punches while Taylor was pinned to the ropes under fire. Froch took a big chance of travelling to the United States to fight Taylor on his own turf, as not too many other champions would have done the same thing if they had been in Froch’s shoes.
However, Froch wants to accomplish something with his career and isn’t satisfied with only doing the minimum with his career like a certain fighter that will remain nameless. For that reason, Froch is a breath of fresh air for the boxing world, because he’s a rarity among champions.
Froch struggled at times against Taylor, having problems with his defense and getting knocked down by Taylor in the 3rd round. If it hadn’t been for Froch’s come from behind knockout in the 12th, Taylor would have won the fight. Froch’s defensive liabilities coupled with his poor hand speed will make it likely that Froch will be an underdog against whichever big named opponent he faces next.
I do believe that Froch would be favored over Pavlik, but that’s only because of Froch’s natural size advantage over Kelly and not because of his better boxing skills.
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