By Scott Gilfoid: World Boxing Council super middleweight champion Carl Froch (25-0, 20 KO’s) got some of the worst possible news imaginable today when it was announced that Froch would have to defend his WBC title against undefeated 2004 U.S. Olympian Andre Dirrell (18-0, 13 KO’s) on October 10th as part of Showtime’s six-man tournament.

The match up for Froch is an especially tough one for the British super middleweight, who had all he could handle fighting former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Jermain Taylor in April before Froch was able to stage a late comeback and stop Taylor with 14 seconds left in the bout.

Dirrell, a fighter that not too many British boxing fans have ever seen or heard of because of their inability to see American fights, is superior to Froch in almost every department both offensively and defensively and is the wrong kind of opponent for Froch to be fighting.

Picture a fighter with arguably better hand speed, power, movement and defense than Joe Calzaghe and you arrive at what Dirrell will be bringing to the table against Froch on October 10th. That’s not a good thing for Froch, who is rather limited when it comes to his ability to box and is more or less defendant on winning by knockouts.

The only thing that Froch has going for him in this fight is that the bout will be taking place in Nottingham. Other than that, Froch is in for deep trouble and will be in danger of losing his WBC title and his ‘0’ along with it. However, it’s better sooner rather than latter that Froch should fight Dirrell, because Dirrell’s ranked at number #3 in the WBC and would be getting a chance at Froch’s title, even if the British fighter tried to avoid him by facing soft opponents for as long as possible.

One good thing about this fight is that Froch won’t be eliminated from the tournament if/when Dirrell beats him. It will just count as a loss and the only thing that Froch will lose is his unbeaten record and his title. He’ll still be able to stick around in the tournament afterwards and will have to fight other top fighters like Mikkel Kessler before he’s through.

Froch has become lionized by some of his British supporters since his miracle stoppage of Taylor in April. However, he looked awful for most of the fight, getting knocked down, and struggling against Taylor. Froch got the win after Taylor faded in the last part of the fight but it wasn’t an impressive performance by Froch.

He seemed to win more because of Taylor’s poor stamina rather than from anything that Froch himself was doing in the fight. If Froch has any hopes of beating Dirrell, he’s going to have to come up with a better fight strategy against the quick handed American, because at 26, Dirrell doesn’t have stamina problems or issues with his chin like Taylor does.

On Friday night, cruiserweight BJ Flores predicted that Dirrell will beat Froch because of his better skills. I have to agree with Flores about his prediction. I think Froch is going to get humiliated by Dirrell.