By Scott Gilfoid: With few people giving World Boxing Council super middleweight champion Carl Froch (25-0, 20 KO’s) much chance of success in being able to win the Showtime Super Six tournament which begins in October, Froch took the opportunity to sing his own praises in an interview with Sky Sports earlier today, commenting “I punch like a mule.”
Froch, 32, is clearly bothered by people not giving him much chance to win the tournament and is annoyed by his first round opponent American Andre Dirrell saying that Froch would be his “easiest” fight of the tourney. Dirrell, 26, recently made mention of Froch’s flaws, and pointed out that he thought that Froch was very slow and hittable. Froch took issue with this, and said “I’m going to ram that fist down the back of his throat in round one and he’s going to want to go home.”
That seems like wishful thinking on Froch’s part, because Dirrell is one of the most elusive fighters in the super middleweight division, if not the most. He’s very hard to hit cleanly, and most of his opponents give up on their power shots after awhile of trying and missing, focusing on just trying to connect, period.
Once Dirrell has his opponents in that situation, the fight is pretty much won because he has a high connect percentage, great speed and good power and is able to take advantage of his opponents by unloading on them with machinegun like punches over and over again.
I expect Froch to land some punches, but he’s going to miss an awful lot of them, and much more than he did in his fight with Jermain Taylor in April. In that fight, Froch missed a lot in the first half of the fight and looked badly over-matched at the point. It was only after Taylor ran out of gas that Froch was able to start landing with a better connect percentage.
Still, Froch missed a lot with his shots even in the second half of the fight against a tired out Taylor. Froch is going to have problems against Dirrell if the American doesn’t fade like Froch’s last two opponents Taylor and Jean Pascal.
Speaking about himself in the third person, Froch said that Taylor is going to have problems with the Nottingham, England crowd, calling it the “Snake pit.” The crowd noise may indeed be a problem for Dirrell, because he will be facing a lot of pro-Froch fans. However, Dirrell is a former 2004 Olympic Bronze Medalist and has no doubt faced hostile crowds in the past and been able to rise above it and fight effectively.
Crowd noise can be a problem when a fighter is standing and trading shots with the home fighter. However, with a mover like Dirrell, it probably won’t make much of a difference because he rarely gets hit and the noise won’t slow him down and make him want to stand and trade with Froch.
Froch seems to think that because he’s beaten quality fighters like Taylor and Pascal it means that he’ll have too much experience for Dirrell. However, Dirrell appears to be a lot better than either of those fighters. Indeed, Dirrell is like a better version of both of them and have the same qualities – speed, movement and power – that they both possess, only better. Froch barely beat Pascal and Taylor, so it stands to reason that Froch will be fortunate if he can get by an even better fighter in Dirrell.
It doesn’t get any easier for Froch after his fight with Dirrell. In his second fight, Froch has been matched very tough by getting Mikkel Kessler and his third fight will be Arthur Abraham. As such, Froch could very well end up losing all three of his opening round fights and end up being eliminated from the tournament. That’s what I expect to happen.
Comments are closed.