By Sean McDaniel: WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (26-0, 20 KO’s) will be venturing into a foreign arena and hoping he can come out on top again when he meets up with former WBA super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler (42-2, 32 KO’s) on April 24th, at the MCH Messecenter Herning, in Herning, Denmark. Froch, 32, proved that he can win on the road when he came from behind to score a spectacular 12th round knockout over Jermain Taylor a year ago on April 24th.
Now, Froch is looking to do the same thing, this time against an arguably better fighter in Kessler. In an article at the Mirror, Froch says “I’ve proved I can go overseas to a fighter’s back year and pull off the big win. I know I will have to do it again against Kessler. He has all the advantages – he’s at home, the crowd will be on his side and he knows defeats means the end of his Super Six dream.” Froch is right about that.
However, a defeat perhaps means even more than that for Kessler. If Kessler loses to Froch, this would be the third loss in the last three years for the 30-year-old Kessler, and it would likely be a signal that Kessler needs to consider hanging up the gloves. He could hang around boxing, of course, and look to pick off one of the super middleweight titles, but with the division absolutely stacked with talent with fighters like Andre Ward, Froch, Lucian Bute and Andre Dirrell, it would be difficult for Kessler to pick up a title, that is, if he can’t beat Froch.
My guess is that Kessler has more than enough to beat the slow and limited Froch. The Nottingham fighter is mostly a crude slugger, and not as fast or arguably as skilled as Kessler. As long as Mikkel doesn’t get stupid and try to slug with Froch or get dragged into a fouling war, he should be able to dominate the fight and possibly sweep all the rounds. Froch is like a British version of Librado Andrade in my view. Kessler totally dominated Andrade, beating him by a lopsided 12 round decision three years ago in March 2007.
Froch says “His [Kessler] biggest advantage will be the fact that he will not want to let any of his devoted fans down and I’ve seen up close and personal just how loud they can be.”
Kessler was beaten in his first fight in the Super Six tournament by Andre Ward by an 11 round technical decision. For whatever reason, Kessler never seemed able to get untracked during the fight, looking as if his timing was way off. Ward, a fast southpaw, seemed to have Kessler’s number, and took advantage of his better hand speed to sting Kessler with hard shots both on the inside and the outside.
Ward couldn’t do anything wrong on that night, as he fought a smart and controlled fight. Kessler, who usually dominates his opponents, was limited to only an occasional punch landed. The rest of the time he was eating hard shots from Ward.
“That defeat makes this fight even better, because Kessler is an old school warrior and he wants to win the Super Six and not take an early bath. It’s my job now to make sure that he gets beat again.” Froch shouldn’t get too overconfident. He could very well lose this fight to Kessler and then lose his next stage 3 bout against Arthur Abraham, and find himself getting knocked out of the tournament. Froch is very lucky he was able to get the knockout over Taylor, because Froch appeared on the verge of losing that fight.
And in his 12 round split decision win over Andre Dirrell in his first bout of the Super Six tournament last October, Froch very well could have lost that fight if a referee was monitoring the fouls a little closer. Froch fought poorly, which is me being kind.
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