By William Mackay: Former WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (26-1, 20 KO’s) has been dragging his heels for the past two months ever since he was beaten by Mikkel Kessler by a 12 round unanimous decision on April 24th in his stage 2 Super Six bout. Now, Froch is rejecting venues like their going out of style for his stage 3 Super Six bout against Arthur Abraham and I’m worrying whether the loss did something to Froch’s mind. He doesn’t seem to have the old fearless warrior attitude that he had before his loss to Kessler.

Froch now seems worried about losing instead of bragging about how he’s going to easily beat and knock out his opponents. There’ no more “I’m going to decapitate him” and instead it’s, “I don’t think I can win a decision over there.” They say no one knows yourself better you do. I’m wondering if Froch has got some self doubt lurking around in his head and clouding his thoughts with a negative outlook of him losing by decision to Abraham in this country or that.

Froch doesn’t seem to want the fight to take place in Europe at all unless it takes place in good old Nottingham, England, where Froch lives. But Froch can’t go on rejecting venues forever. He’s going to have to get off the pot and meet Abraham’s people halfway. Instead of rejecting the European locations, Froch needs to find at least one that he is comfortable with and thinks he can get a fair decision. But as far as the fight taking place in Canada, Nottingham or the United States, I think that’s a pipe dream on Froch’s part. He needs to let that go and come to the table with something a little more realistic.

Froch says he doesn’t care about money for this fight, which is why he’s okay with it taking place in Canada or the U.S., where it would likely do poor ticket sales because neither he nor Abraham likely have a big enough fan base to sell out anything but a really small hall. But Sauerland Events, the promoter for Abraham, do want to make money for this fight and they would like to have the fight take place in a location where they can make the most money.

What I would hate is for Froch to end up leaving the tournament because he can’t come with anything more than Nottingham, Canada or the U.S. to fight. And I’d also hate to see Froch get asked to leave. I don’t know if Showtime would ever do this, but you have to wonder what they would do if Froch steadfastly refuses to fight anywhere but those three locals.

I think Froch doesn’t have anything to worry about in terms of losing by a decision to Abraham. I see Froch getting knocked out by one of Abraham’s vicious shots. The loss, of course, would be Froch’s second in his three first round fights in the Super Six tournament. As such, this would mean that Froch would be basically drummed out of the tournament because he wouldn’t make the semi finals. He would move on while Abraham would move up to the next level.

I don’t know how Froch would react being eliminated from the Super Six tournament. Given how seemingly upset he was with his close 12 round decision loss to Kessler, a knockout defeat, especially a bad one, might really mess up Froch’s mind and cause him to start thinking about retirement. Hopefully, he would have it together a little bit and see the loss as nothing to worry about, but I have my doubts that Froch would be able to just put the defeat behind him and move on.

As it is, you can make a strong argument that Froch should have lost both of his Super Six tournament fights, not just his second fight. Froch looked horrible in his stage 1 bout against Andre Dirrell while fighting at home in Nottingham. Froch won the fight by a 12 round split decision, but a tremendous amount of people believe that Dirrell should have won.