By Sean McDaniel: In looking over the past handful of fights of Carl Froch (26-0, 20 KO’s) and Mikkel Kessler (42-2, 32 KO’s), I don’t see how Froch has the talent to beat Kessler in their April 24th fight. While I think Froch is a good pressure fighter with heavy hands, I think he’s lacking in a number of major departments compared to Kessler. The first thing that comes to mind is Froch’s lack of hand speed.

That might not be a big deal to some people, but Froch will need hand speed if he wants to land his long punches. Kessler has only been beaten twice in his career by Joe Calzaghe and Andre Ward, and in both cases these were fighters with blazing hand speed.

Froch, as good as he is, isn’t anywhere close to being as fast as those two guys. Hand speed is one area, but Froch is also not a very slick fighter. He’s more of a straight ahead surge type. I see him like a big tsunami that comes forward and just tries to go through his opponents in a straight line. If you stand in front of Froch, he’s going to run you down with his power.

Andre Dirrell showed how to beat Froch, though. In his Super Six bout with Froch last year in October, Dirrell backed up and moved from side to side to keep Froch from being able to run him down. It worked for the most part, because Froch was unable to land few clean punches in the fight unless he was in a clinch or had momentarily cornered Dirrell. Froch ended badly frustrated, looking perhaps even more frustrated than Abraham was last Saturday night before being disqualified for hitting Dirrell when he was on the canvas.

The only way Froch can really have a chance of beating Kessler is if he can come at him much faster than he did in his bout with Dirrell. This means that Froch instead of plodding forward at a slow pace like he did in the first four rounds against Dirrell, he’s going to have to charge Kessler and throw punches as he’s moving. Froch did a lot of that in the 2nd half of his fight with Dirrell, and had limited success.

Froch still was having big problems landing his shots against Dirrell, but was much more effective when fighting in this way compared to when he was moving slowly in the first half of the fight. Kessler isn’t as fast as Dirrell, but he moves fast enough to get out of Froch’s way if Carl opts to slowly shuffle forward like he normally does. Froch cannot fight like that and expect to beat Kessler.

That would be the wrong approach for this fight, because Kessler would be firing off jab after jab and catching Froch in the beard as he moves slowly forward. Froch needs to take chances by rushing Kessler and trapping him. It’s a plan that will cause Froch to take some shots, but it will also throw Kessler’s game plan on and get him out of his defensive shell.

Kessler is the type of fighter that if you give him time to set up his defense and offense, he’ll beat you all night long. Calzaghe and Ward didn’t allow Kessler to do this, and attacked him constantly, making him uncomfortable by not being able to fight a slower more methodical pace.