By Sean McDaniel: In two fights in the Super Six tournament, former International Boxing Federation (IBF) middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (31-1, 25 KO’s) has badly hurt both of his opponents to the point where they’ve had to pull out of the tournament entirely. Now, Abraham will be facing former WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (26-1, 20 KO’s) in the last stage competition of the Super Six tournament. Froch is even more of a target for shots than Abraham’s other two opponents Jermain Taylor and Andre Dirrell. Froch is the kind of fighter that doesn’t mind the give and take of a normal fight and doesn’t shy away from taking big shots from his opponents, that is, until his last fight against Mikkel Kessler in April.

In that fight, Froch came out of character and actually backed up against Kessler and let him come forward. The end result was a 12 round decision loss to Froch, a defeat that doesn’t sit too well with him to this day. While Froch has looked good in coming forward and attacking his opponents in the past, he didn’t look nearly as good backing up against Kessler. If Froch fights defensively against Abraham, he may end up giving up the decision in order to survive taking serious punishment and possibly getting hurt permanently by Abraham’s huge punches.

However, if Froch comes forward and fights the way that he did in past fights with Dirrell, Taylor and Jean Pascal, he has a good chance of winning the fight but with the risk that he could get badly hurt by Abraham. It could be a trade off for Froch. Either he decides ton risk everything and take the fight to Abraham or else he plays it safe to survive to another day. I think Froch may opt for the survival mode after tasting Abraham’s power early on. Froch won’t be able to hurt Abraham with his steel chin and high guard, but I can’t say the same thing for Froch. He can get badly hurt by Abraham if he makes the mistake of trying to mix it up with him and get knocked out.