By William Mackay: WBC super middleweight Carl Froch (26-0, 20 KO’s) sounds like victory over former WBA super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler (42-2, 32 KO’s) is a foregone conclusion.

Froch says in an article at the UK.eurosport “They say styles make fights and our fight will be an exciting one. I am curious to see whether it will be the old or the new Kessler in the ring. It does not matter to me. I am planning to knock him out anyway.”

Kessler, 30, is in a rebuilding process with his career after losing an 11 round technical decision to Andre Ward on November 21st. Kessler replaced his long time trainer after the loss. However, it’s doubtful that any trainer or earth could have trained Kessler well enough to beat Ward on that night. It was beyond training and strategy.

Ward just looked like an altogether better equipped fighter in terms of raw physical skills. Kessler, a decent puncher, didn’t have the massive power needed to make up for his lack of speed and movement against Ward. Without the speed and movement to contend with Ward, Kessler found himself in an impossible situation and went down to a one-sided defeat.

Kessler says “Well, Carl, you don’t know the new Mikkel Kessler yet. You will be in for a very explosive surprise when we meet. You [Froch] are a nice guy, but business is business, and I want to win my old WBC belt back. I had a very bad night in the office against Ward but champions bounce back even stronger. I did that once after the Calzaghe fight and I will do it against when get in the in the ring.”

After losing a 12 round decision to Calzaghe in November 2007, Kessler responded with three consecutive wins, beating Dimitri Sartison, Danilo Haussler and Gusmyr Perdomo. Kessler looked especially good in the Sartison and Haussler fights.

Sartison had his moments in the first half of his fight against Kessler in June 2008, landing a handful of nice right hands that got Kessler’s attention and had him looking a little timid for awhile. However, Kessler continue to pump in a hard jab and land right hands and left hooks to punish Sartison. As the rounds went by, Sartison took more and more of a beating and by the 12th, he had taken enough and the fight finally stopped.

Froch will have to land more than an occasional right hand if he wants to beat Kessler. And more importantly, Froch is going to have to find some hand speed if he wants to beat Kessler. As slow as Froch looked in his fight against Andre Dirrell and Jermain Taylor last year, Kessler would likely dominate Froch and win the fight.

Froch has the power to win, but his delivery system is lacking entirely. Froch doesn’t have good hand speed at all, and he had huge problems landing any of his power shots in his last fight against Dirrell because of Carl’s slow hand speed.