By Scott Gilfoid: It’s nice that former WBA super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler (43-2, 32 KO’s) was able to get by Carl Froch (26-1, 20 KO’s) in his stage 2 Super Six bout and escape with a narrow win, but Kessler now has to face the always dangerous mean Allan Green (29-2, 20 KO’s) in his next Super Six tournament fight on September 25th, and I’m not so certain that Kessler will win this fight. It’s one thing beating a slow fighter like Froch, whose hands and movements are slow and robotic, but it’s quite another thing to fight a guy like Green, who is both fast and powerful.
Never mind the fact that Andre Ward was able to totally outclass Green last weekend in their stage 2 Super Six tourney fight in Oakland, California. Ward is a different case, a higher talent and it was to be expected that Ward would easily win that fight unless Green landed one of his bombs. Ward did a perfect job of neutralizing Green’s power by smothering him and staying close to him.
Kessler was already dominated by Ward even worse than Ward dominated Green. So you can’t just look at how badly Green was beaten by Ward and assume that Kessler will be able to do the same thing to him, because Kessler was totally dominated too by Ward. What we have here is two fighters that both were schooled by Ward. The trick is to pick the best of that bunch, and I think Green has got the better tools in the toolbox compared to Kessler right now.
I think Kessler was a really good fighter in his prime, but he’s starting to show his age and doesn’t look like the same fighter he was back in 2007. You could see the problems that Kessler had the way he struggled against Froch recently. This was a fighter that Kessler would have likely totally schooled had the fight taken place three years ago. I think Kessler would have beaten Froch as easily as Kessler beat super middleweight contender Librado Andrade in March 2007. Kessler easily beat Andrade without any problems, winning every round of the fight in a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision victory. But against Froch, Kessler looked weaker somehow, and not the same fighter he was in the past.
I expect Kessler to come into the Green fight supremely confident from his win over Froch, and thinking that Green will be easy money. Kessler will probably try to not get his hands dirty too much by figuring he can dominate with his jab alone without taking big shots from Green. But Green won’t be having none of that, he’s going to go right after Kessler and start bombarding him with big right hands and left hooks and make him fight.
The way to beat Green isn’t by fighting him on the outside. That’s how you lose to him, because Green fights very well when given room to extend on his punches. The way you beat Green is to smother him like Ward did. Kessler doesn’t know how to fight on the inside, and probably won’t even try to fight Green that way. In close, Kessler is like a kitten, totally harmless, as we found out in his one-sided loss to Ward last year in November. But Kessler is going to stubbornly try to fight Green on the outside, and start taking heavy shots.
Since Kessler showed zero ability to adapt in his losses to Joe Calzaghe and Ward when both of those fighters got inside on him and began to beat him up, I expect the same thing from Kessler in the Green fight. He’s going to get battered by Green, and I can see both of Kessler’s eyes getting cut early from Green’s big shots. If I was training Kessler, I’d have him learning how to fight on the inside quickly, because he only has three months before his fight with Green and needs the win to make it to the semi finals. I wouldn’t just leave Kessler and tell foolishly fight Green on the outside. If he does that, Green is going to brain Kessler with punch after punch and have spitting teeth or counting stars before he knows it.
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