By William Mackay: Here it is almost the middle of July and former WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (26-1, 20 KO’s) still hasn’t decided on a venue for his stage 3 bout Super Six tournament bout against Arthur Abraham (31-1, 25 KO’s). Froch is supposed to be fighting Abraham in September, but now I’m not so sure. Froch, 33, refuses to fight Abraham in Germany because he feels that he won’t be able to get a decision over there.
This is pretty silly, because Froch won what many people feel was a hometown decision in his win over Andre Dirrell last year in October. In Froch’s last fight, he was defeated by Mikkel Kessler by a 12 round decision in Denmark. Froch didn’t agree with the decision, and feels that he should have won the fight and not Kessler.
That experience seems to have jaded Froch because he can’t agree on any of the venues that are being offered up by Abraham’s promotional team. The latest word was that Froch wanted the fight to take place in Ireland for some reason. Given that Ireland is right next door to England, it’s highly unlikely that Abraham will want to go along with that, and I frankly don’t blame him one bit.
Froch wants to find a location where it’s easy for his fans to come see him fight while at the same time picking a spot where he thinks he has a good chance of winning a decision. I don’t that there is a location outside of the UK where Froch will be able to get a lot of his fans to come see him fight. I don’t think Froch is at the popularity level of someone like Ricky Hatton, David Haye or Amir Khan.
The chances of Froch of actually beating Abraham, regardless of wherever they end up fighting, is pretty slim. Froch’s whole style of fighting in which he goes right after his opponents and looks to slug is made to order for Abraham. This is the perfect opponent for Abraham. If you were to make a mold of the ideal guy for Abraham to fight it would be Froch.
The reason why is because Froch likes to stand and trade shots all fight long and hardly ever backs off. He’s basically a 50s type of fighter in the wrong era. Abraham is going to tee off on Froch and lop his head off with one of his big right hands. By not making a decision about the venue of the fight, Froch is saving himself a lot of potential humiliation when he ends up getting knocked out by Abraham.
Once Abraham beats Froch then he’s finished in the Super Six tourney. Froch will have to go back to Nottingham a beaten man and will have to figure out what he wants to do next. Obviously, it’s probably a bad idea for Froch to stay at super middleweight because the talented fighters like Dirrell, Andre Ward, Kessler and Abraham will continue to cause Froch all kinds of problems. What Froch needs to do is move up to the light heavyweight division and try his luck at that weight.
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