By Scott Gilfoid: WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch is confident and looking forward to his October 17th bout against number #2 rated WBC contender Andre Dirrell (18-0, 13 KO’s) in Nottingham. In an article from the Sporting News, Froch appears to be taken aback by Dirrell’s own cockiness, saying “Dirrell obviously thinks he’s a lot better than he really is. He’s a big mouth and he’s loud and brash but now he’s going to have to back up all that big talk now.”
Froch might as well be talking to the mirror, because he’s everything that he says that Dirrell is. Froch, 32, is never shy about bragging about his abilities, whether it be about his power or about who he can beat. Froch has been predicting that he’s going to beat Dirrell, but Froch is going to have to back up what he’s been saying.
Considering how bad Froch looked in his fight against American Jermain Taylor in April, the last thing that you would expect from Froch is for him to make predictions or get on Dirrell’s case about his boasts about how he’s going to beat Froch. In his fight with Taylor, Froch was getting schooled for most of the fight, and needed to come from behind to score a knock out in the final seconds of the fight to get the win.
Froch would have lost the fight if Taylor has boxed in the final round and stayed on his feet. I think Froch needs to take Dirrell seriously when Andre talks about being able to beat Froch, because the American is much faster and arguably more skilled than Froch.
Some people are saying that Dirrell is a better version of Taylor, better in the speed department, better in the power department and much better in the stamina and chin department. Now that’s not good news for Froch, because if Taylor has been stamina and chin, he would have easily beaten Froch.
Froch is counting on the crowd noise in Nottingham being a problem for Dirrell, and thinks that he’ll have problems with the noise. I kind of doubt it. Froch points out that he had to fight in front of an American audience in Mashantucket, Connecticut, for his fight against Taylor. What Froch doesn’t point out is that the crowd was hardly pro-Taylor, since Jermain comes from Arkansas, not Connecticut.
In fact, the crowd was closer to being neutral than fans of Taylor’s. What Froch doesn’t realize is that American crowds aren’t all that nationalistic. They like their favorites, but they don’t play the us against them type sick stuff that some countries do.
But believe me, Taylor wasn’t fighting in front of a huge pro-Taylor fan base in his fight against Froch. I do believe Froch when he says that it’s going to be a hostile crowd for Dirrell, but I don’t think that will be a factor at all in the fight. Those kind of crowds work when it’s a wrestling match, like the Kostya Tsyzu vs. Ricky Hatton bout was in Manchester, England. But in an actual fight where one fighter isn’t being mugged on the inside, Dirrell is going to have all the advantages because of his speed, youth and accuracy.
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