By Scott Gilfoid: As usual, WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (26-0, 20 KO’s) is predicting a gloomy outlook for his April 24th opponent Mikkel Kessler, saying in an article at the Sun, “When I beat Kessler it will be the end for him. I will be finishing him off. Our fight will be his last hurrah. It’s his [Kessler] last chance of being in the big time. He has already lost twice and it will soon be three.” Man, Froch sounds like a real downer. His dour predictions always seem so gloomy.

But I hate to say it, but I think Froch is the one that needs to be concerned with being finished off. I already see Froch as having one loss from his fight against Andre Dirrell in October. Sure, Froch won, but a lot of people like me who live outside of the UK feel differently.

Froch won the fight but by a deeply controversial 12 round split decision. He can twist that any way he wants, but it doesn’t look good that Froch had to struggle to win while fighting at home and come up with a victory that many people felt should have gone in Dirrell’s favor. And if that was the only fight that Froch had problems in maybe I wouldn’t be so worried for the dude.

But he looked just as bad in his fight against Jermain Taylor last year, getting knocked down and trailing in the fight into the 12th round. Yeah, Froch won the fight by a 12th round knockout but he looked awful to me and would have likely lost the bout had he not scored the knockout.

Froch struggling against Dirrell and Taylor tells me that Froch could be facing the end of his unbeaten streak when he enters the ring with Kessler on April 24th. The fight won’t be held in Froch’s home city of Nottingham where a ton of screaming fans would help Froch.

And if the decision winds up close, I seriously doubt the judges will give Froch the benefit of the doubt, not this time. Close [read: controversial] decisions usually wind up going to the home fighter and last time I checked that’s not going to be Froch. Not this time. So if Froch is going to win this fight, he’s going to have to look mighty impressive and show some real skills in their against Kessler.

Froch won’t be able to rough Kessler up, not be penalized and then have the referee inexplicably penalize Kessler for holding without penalizing Froch for holding and hitting, throwing rabbit punches or body slamming. I think if Froch fights like that, he’s going to lose plain and simple. Froch is going to have to show some skills if he wants this fight.

I don’t see Froch knocking Kessler out. As such, I think Froch is going to end up losing a one-sided 12 round decision to Kessler. Scoring a knockout is probably Froch’s only chance of winning, but if an incredible fighter like American Andre Ward can’t knockout Kessler, then a slow-moving, upright fighting Froch most certainly won’t be able get the job done.

If there’s any knocking out to be done, it’s going to be Kessler knocking out Froch. Kessler won’t be afraid to go after Froch is he gets him in trouble, and as we saw in Froch’s bout against the talented Andre Dirrell, Froch was hurt at least twice in that fight.

There could be some lingering damage to Froch’s chin from the big left hand howitzer shot that Dirrell tagged him with in the 10th round. All Kessler has to do is hit Froch as hard as he can with one of his big rights on Froch’s lantern jaw, and we could be seeing Froch going down for the count. Kessler needs to test Froch’s chin early and often to see whether Dirrell left some lasting damage from his fight with him.