By Scott Gilfoid: For a fighter that recently got handled in his last fight by Mikkel Kessler, former WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (26-1, 20 KO’s) isn’t lacking for courage as he goes into his fight next month against former IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (31-1, 25 KO’s) at the Hartwall Arena, in Helsinki , Finland. In an interview at eastsideboxing.com, Froch says “You know Arthur Abraham can’t beat me. Really, he can’t beat me. Obviously, it’s boxing and the guy can punch, but I need to stay focused to execute my game plan. As long as I do that right, it should be an easy night’s work.”

Froch has talked about wanting to slug with Abraham in this fight, which I wouldn’t advise Froch to do because Abraham has already hurt two of his Super Six tournament contestants to the point where they’ve had to pull out of the Super Six tournament.

However, Froch does things his own way and sees himself as having a steel chin. Well, Abraham is going to test Froch’s chin to see if it’s as strong as Froch thinks it is. My advice is for Froch to stay clear of Abraham as much as possible in this fight and to keep his guard up at all times to keep from ending up in the hospital like Jermain Taylor and Andre Dirrell.

Froch has this to say about Abraham: “He’s very crude. He’s not majorly skillful. You know what you get with Arthur Abraham. He’s going to come, he’s going to stand in front of me, and he’s going to try and take me to the later rounds and try and bang me out. He’s talking maybe doing something different, but I don’t know if you can teach an old dog new tricks.”

You can make the same argument about Froch. I don’t think Froch is going to be able to revert from his slugging instincts and focus on boxing Abraham in this fight. I think Froch is going to briefly try to box Abraham for 20 seconds of the first round and then immediately start to slug after that when he starts taking shots. I do think Abraham is going to fight differently in this bout.

Instead of starting slow, I see him coming out fast throwing bombs from the 1st round on. Abraham learned an important lesson in his loss to Andre Dirrell in his last fight. He knows he can’t afford to start slowly and give up the first half of the fight hoping to score a knockout in the later rounds. This is why Abraham will likely jump on Froch from the first round and look to take him out as fast as possible.

I just hope Froch is conscious of trying to cover up when Abraham starts shots. Froch can’t just let his chin take the shots hoping that he can trade with the former IBF champion. If that happens, I can see Froch getting taken out in the opening round.