By Scott Gilfoid: World Boxing Council super middleweight champion Carl Froch (26-0, 20 KO’s) will taste defeat for the first time on April 17th in his stage 2 Super Six bout against former WBA super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler (42-2, 32 KO’s) when they step into the ring for action in Kessler’s home country of Denmark.

Froch, 32, better get used to the experience, because he’s going to very likely be getting beaten against in his stage 3 bout in the Super Six tourney when he meets up a slightly tarnished Arthur Abraham, who will likely be fresh off a lopsided 12 round defeat at the hands of American Andre Dirrell.

But as for the April 17th fight, I think Froch will have huge troubles with Kessler’s hand speed, power and boxing ability. Froch is reportedly unhappy with the fight taking place in Herning, Denmark. Froch wants the fight to take place in Copenhagen so more of his British fans and make the jaunt over from England to see him fight. As of now, there’s no official word about whether the fight will take place in Herning or Copenhagen, but I can’t see it making a bit of difference where it takes place.

Froch has good support; I don’t imagine a huge swarm of British fans will be coming over to Denmark like the typical fan base that follows British fighter Ricky Hatton around the globe. It’s good that Froch cares about his fans, but I still see Kessler wiping the deck with Froch all night long in this fight. Kessler just seems to be on another level, and Froch is really kind of mechanical and slow moving.

As long as Kessler doesn’t age overnight, he should have more than enough left in the tank to easily handle Froch. Kessler was beaten in his last fight against Andre Ward in an 11 round technical decision on November 21st. Kessler looked nothing short of horrible in that fight, but the thing of it is, Ward was just really good and able to take advantage of Kessler’s inability to fight on the inside. Froch won’t be able to capitalize on Kessler’s poor inside fighting ability like Ward, mainly because Froch doesn’t fight well on the inside either.

Froch is a typical European fighter who fights in a ramrod straight up style with his head leaning slightly forward. The only thing I can see that is Western about Froch is that he fights with his hands down by his sides for some reason. I don’t have a clue why Froch does this, because it doesn’t seem to serve him very well.

I mean, he doesn’t pull his hands up in time to block incoming shots much of the time, making his chin and face block a lot of the shots. At this point in his career, I think Froch won’t likely be changing this defensive style anytime soon, so I’m expecting him to be still fighting like that when he faces Kessler in April. Without good movement, defense or hand speed, I see Froch getting drilled to pieces against Kessler.

This is going to be much worse than the Dirrell-Froch fight, because Kessler won’t move around as much and clinch. Oh, I do think that Kessler will move some, but not to the extent that Dirrell did in his fine performance against Froch. Kessler is going to be raining shots down on Froch, snapping his head back again and again with hard jabs like an ocean buoy during severe storm.

Prediction: Kessler by lopsided 12 round decision