By William Mackay: World Boxing Council (WBC) super middleweight champion Carl Froch (25-0, 20 KO’s) will be facing a very confident opponent in former 2004 Olympic Bronze Medalist Andre Dirrell (18-0, 13 KO’s), who sees this fight as his “easiest fight.”
The two will be meeting up on October 17th as part of Showtime’s six-man tourney. Dirrell, 26, has had his sites set on a fight with Froch since then tournament was first announced, saying that he specifically requested for Froch to be his first opponent because he thinks that the British fighter is very beatable compared to the other fighters – Arthur Abraham, Jermain Taylor, Andre Ward and Mikkel Kessler – in the tournament.
Froch, 32, captured the WBC title with a 12-round unanimous decision over Jean Pascal in December 2008. And Froch has defended the title once since then, beating Jermain Taylor by a 12th round TKO in which Froch stopped him with only 14 seconds left in the fight.
At the time of the stoppage, Froch was behind on the scorecards and needed a knockout to win. Dirrell saw both of the fights, and wasn’t impressed in the least with what he saw from Froch. Dirrell feels that Pascal gave the fight away by using the wrong tactics in the fight, and thinks that Froch was very lucky to score the knockout in the 12th against Taylor.
Dirrell didn’t see anything special from Froch in either fight, and feels that he’s not a real champion at this point. For that to happen, Dirrell says that Froch will have to beat everyone and win the tournament. As of now, few boxing experts are picking Froch as the fighter to win the tournament. But then again, next to no one is giving Dirrell much of a chance either to come out the winner.
Dirrell says that he’s been wanting to fight Froch for some time, well before the tournament was ever announced to the boxing public. Not shy about talking about himself, Dirrell is predicting that he’ll be the one to emerge as the champion of the tournament and will bring back all the titles with him – minus the IBF belt, which belongs to champion Lucian Bute who won’t be participating in the tourney.
Dirrell has much more respect for the other European fighters, Kessler and Abraham, seeing them as great fighters both offensively and defensively. Froch will be giving up a lot of hand speed against the younger Dirrell and will have to find a way to wear him down the same way that Froch was able to tire out both Taylor and Pascal in his fights with them.
However, Taylor and Pascal came into their fights with Froch as being known for fading late in their fights. This isn’t a problem that has been seen before in Dirrell’s game, so Froch might have to look for another strategy in how he can beat Dirrell. He might not be able to count on him fading the same way that Taylor and Pascal did.
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