By Scott Gilfoid: WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch is going to have to settle for a fight against former World Boxing Association super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler in 2010 without Kessler’s title being on the line after the Danish fighter was soundly beaten by American talent Andre Ward on November 21st in Oakland, California. Not only will the title not be at stake for Froch, but also given the terrible beating that Kessler took against Ward, Froch won’t likely get nearly as much credit as he would have received had he been the first fighter to beat Kessler in the Super Six tournament.

That has to be disappointing for the Nottingham fighter, because he was hoping that this would be his big chance to impress boxing fans by beating Kessler in front of the entire world and Ward went and beat him to it. Now if Froch ends up looking less than impressive or winds up losing to Kessler, he’s going to take a lot of criticism in the boxing world.

That’s too bad. Froch already didn’t look good in his last fight against Andre Dirrell, winning by a controversial 12 round split decision. Dirrell staggered Froch in the 10th round with a big left hand to the head and it looked to me – and more than a few other boxing fans – that Dirrell had won the fight. All of this would be forgotten if Froch would have beaten Kessler while he still held onto his WBA title. As it is, Froch will get little credit if he beats Kessler and a whole lot of criticism of he fails at the task. I correctly predicted the outcome of the Kessler-Ward fight long before the fight took place.

I could see that Kessler was getting a long in the tooth in the past year and I knew Ward was going to handle him without many problems. However, I don’t think that Kessler is so far gone that the likes of Froch can beat him. Froch doesn’t have the hand speed or foot movement to handle the technically oriented Kessler, and I think Froch is going to have big problems again him.

Froch also won’t be able to count on his Nottingham fans to back him in this fight because the fight will be taking place in Denmark, the home of Kessler. Froch will be fighting in a strange land, in front of a hostile crowd against a faster, more technical fighter in the 30-year-old Kessler. I don’t see anything good that can come of this for Froch.

Either way, Froch ends up looking bad in this. The only way that Froch can get out of this fight looking good is if he flattens Kessler in the 1st or 2nd round. Other than that, Froch is in a near no win situation. This is why he needs to go all out to try and get to Kessler as early as possible. Ward jumped all over Kessler early in the fight and basically took the fight out of him. Can Froch do this? I’m not so certain. With Froch’s straight up style of fighting, he’ll be a sitting duck for Kessler’s jabs and hooks as he comes forward trying to land.