By William Mackay: Former WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (26-1, 20 KO’s) has recently said that he’d pull out of the Super Six tournament if he’s forced to fight the hard hitting Arthur Abraham (31-1, 25 KO’s) in the Armenian’s adopted country of Germany rather than in some other location. Yesterday, in an article at The Sun, Froch again spoke about pulling out of the Super Six tournament if Showtime makes him fight in Germany, saying “I won’t be going anywhere east of Nottingham to fight Abraham and it won’t be in Showtime’s interest for me to pull out.”

Anything east of Nottingham would be Germany, unfortunately. It’s disappointing to see Froch talking about pulling out of the tournament if he doesn’t get his way. The fact of the matter is the fighters are forced, at some point, to fight on the road against their opponents. Andre Ward may be an exception for now, but if he makes it to the semi finals, there’s a pretty good chance he’ll be fighting on the road as well. Froch, for some reason, doesn’t think he can win a decision in Germany. Froch says “The home town decisions in this competition have been a disgrace, so I am not going to Berlin because there’s no chance for me to pull out.”

Presumably, Froch must be talking about Ward’s win over Mikkel Kessler and Andre Dirrell’s 11th round disqualification victory over Abraham. I’m not sure, but I don’t think that too many people see those as home town decisions. The Ward fight was one-sided, and far from a home town decision. The Dirrell fight was a case of Abraham being disqualified for teeing off on Dirrell after he slipped on the canvas. The referee had little choice but to disqualify Abraham after Dirrell was knocked out by the blow. I think Abraham would have been disqualified in most countries, probably even Germany as well.

Chances are good that Showtime and Abraham’s promoters will placate Froch by putting the fight in a neutral country like Switzerland. Hopefully, this is enough to please Froch and he doesn’t continue to be unhappy. Froch has made it no secret that he wants the Abraham fight to be held in Nottingham, where he would like for it to take place in a football stadium if possible. However, Froch has already fought in Nottingham in his first fight of the Super Six tournament, a fight in which he beat Andre Dirrell by a controversial decision. This is one fight where an avalanche of boxing fans felt that Froch received a home town decision in beating Dirrell by a controversial 12 round split decision. Two of the European judges awarded Froch the decision, while the Mexican judge saw Dirrell winning the fight. Froch was finally beaten by Mikkel Kessler by a 12 round decision last month on April 24th. Froch thinks he would have won that fight if it was held in Nottingham. A lot of boxing fans who saw Froch’s fight against Dirrell believe him, but probably not for the reasons that Froch thinks.

It will be disappointing if Froch does opt to pull out of the Super Six tournament if he doesn’t get his way by being forced to fight in Germany. Personally, I think it would be a bad move on Froch’s part, because the best fighters in the Super Six tournament are in the tournament, with the exception of IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute. Froch could go after Bute, but that’s a bad match up for him and he could end up losing again. He also might have to wait awhile to get a fight with Bute and end up wasting time fighting lesser fighters.

The good thing would be that Froch would be able to keep winning, but the bad thing is he wouldn’t be doing it against the same type of fighters he would be facing in the Super Six tournament. Froch has said he’d like to move up to the light heavyweight division to fight a rematch against Jean Pascal, whom he already beat in the past. Normally, I would think that would be a good idea but the problem is Pascal is facing Chad Dawson in August and there’s a better than average chance that Pascal will lose that fight and end up getting dominated by the bigger, stronger and equally fast Dawson. It might not be as appealing for Froch to fight Pascal again with the Canadian based fighter coming off a knockout or lopsided decision loss to Dawson.