By Scott Gilfoid: Former IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (31-1, 25 KO’s) has the kind of punching power that puts his opponents to sleep if he can land his shots. Most of the time, his opponents focus on safety first and try to minimize the amount of times that Abraham is allowed to land his crushing shots.

Still, however, Abraham catches up to most of his opponents before long and ends up knocking them out. Abraham finally met up with a fighter that he couldn’t catch up to in Andre “The Matrix” Dirrell in his last fight in the Super Six tournament last March. What resulted was an embarrassing fight in which Abraham was knocked down and missed countless punches trying to land against the speedy Dirrell. Finally, call it frustration or perhaps just a simple mistake, Abraham teed off on Dirrell after the American had slipped on the canvas in the 11th round. The punch badly hurt Dirrell, and caused the referee Lawrence Cole to step in and disqualify Abraham at 1:13 of the 11th.

Abraham was embarrassed and angry about the loss. And now he’s coming into his next fight against Britain’s Carl Froch looking to make up for it by knocking Froch out and making sure that he can get to the finals of the Super Six tournament. You couldn’t have come up with a more perfect opponent for Abraham to knock out if you tried. Simply put, Froch is tailor made for Abraham. Froch fights with his hands down by his waist, tends to stand straight up in a European stance, likes to brawl rather than box, and tries to overpower his opponents.

Froch is in love with his power, and because of he’s got a good chin, he’s been able to outlast a lot of his opponents. Things aren’t easy for Froch anymore, though, because he’s taking punishment in his fights and there’s a strong argument that can be made that Froch should have lost his last two fights in the Super Six tourney, not just his last one to Mikkel Kessler. And really, Froch is lucky he beat Jermain Taylor in 2009, because he was on the verge of losing that fight when Froch rallied in the 12th and stopped Taylor. That could easily be three straight losses for Froch. But now he’s fighting a guy that hits a lot harder than both Dirrell and Taylor, and who’s main goal is to knock his opponents out each time he goes into the ring. Abraham isn’t just trying to win decisions.

He wants to knock his opponents out. Well, he probably won’t have to go looking for Froch on October 2nd, because Froch will probably be standing right in front of him trying to punch with him. I know Froch is probably being told by his trainer to box Abraham and not to slug it out with him. But I don’t see Froch as the type that can carry out that kind of game plan. That’s like telling someone not to breath. As soon as Froch tastes leather in the 1st round, he’s probably going to abandon any well-crafted plans and just slug it out like a school boy that has put on gloves for the first time and is fighting his brother in the front yard. I seriously doubt there will be much skill on display. It’s going to be Abraham and Froch reaching back and trying to take each other’s heads off.

I wish I could say that Froch would win this battle, but I don’t think he will. Abraham hits too hard, and Froch is much too wide open on defense. Abraham has excellent defensive skills, so he’s probably going to block most of Froch’s incoming fire during the bout. But I don’t see the same thing from Froch. I think he’s going to be blocking shots all right. But he’s going to be blocking them with his head and sooner or later if you let a big puncher like Abraham have free reign to hit you, then he’s going to knock you out. Sadly, this is what I see happening to Froch in this fight. I see him getting knocked out, eliminated from the Super Six tournament and sent back to Nottingham on a plane with the doctor’s orders to keep him under constant observation to make sure he’s feeling alright.