By Mark Young: I just read Tom Graves article on a potential match up between Froch and Hopkins after the Super Six, it makes good reading and while I agree that the match looks great on paper, but is something Froch would be better off staying away from.the Executioner.

Should Carl Froch win the Super Six he’ll likely be expected to keep to his word and move up to light heavyweight. In fact, with the diminished credibility that the Super Six now has, I think Froch will be able to walk away with his head held high after the event even if he does lose to Ward in a pro Ward final. I see no shame in losing to a guy who, judging by the current state of things will be getting the benefit of some dubious decisions. Don’t get me wrong, Ward didn’t win a gold medal and his last three fights by chance, he’s good alright, but I just can’t see Showtime allowing a situation where in a final Froch is going to be allowed to get any rhythm going. I know he wants the fight in New York, but I’m thinking Vegas as it’s closer to Oakland and Ward likes to be close to California.

As for Bernard Hopkins, what can I say?. I find him painful to watch these days, he sussed out Pascal in their Montreal fight and felt stung at the end of a home town decision perhaps, but you have to account for the fact he got knocked down twice and managed to exude his usual unsporting persona mid fight,.which was never going to fly in Canada. Before Pascal there was the long awaited Roy Jones rematch, which apart from being 20 years too late racked up as possibly the most painful experience ever televised, Hopkins beat the completely shot Roy and even though Roy didn’t even put up a fight we still saw Bernard crawling around on the floor mid fight.

Call me old fashioned but wandering around the ring on all fours pretending you’ve been hit some place you haven’t, while half the planet are watching the replay in slow motion and shaking their heads isn’t my definition of ring generalship, it’s pantomime and it should be penalised there and then with a point deduction. When Hopkins finally does have someone’s number he will consider putting his gloves up and having a fight, but if he’s unsure then he’s more than happy to turn the whole evenings events into a crime scene. You can come away from a Hopkins fight seriously wondering what just happened, the judges are sitting bemused at ringside, like the cast of CSI trying to sift through the evidence of a train wreck and work out who did what, only to announce at the end they’re not quite sure and would like to call it a something or other, while Hopkins stands there whining to anyone who will listen that he just can’t get a break.

Philadelphia’s finest always forgive Bernard, he’s one of them and in Philly they’ll tell you he’s not getting the credit he deserves, everyone else however is usually still spewing at the fact they could have gone out for a few beers and caught the highlights. He does have the odd decent performance, like when he beat bloated middleweight Kelly Pavlik at a close to LH catch weight, sadly we were all treated to an Oscar Speech that would rival Halle Berrys tearful warbling and clearly ignored the fact that “The Ghost” was not only bloated way above his weight class but also more than a touch over hyped.

Carl Froch has nothing to gain fighting Bernard, you cannot beat a 46 year old when you’re a 33 year old, if you win you’re going to have everyone mumbling “well he’s 46 and would have beat you in his prime!” and if you lose you’ve got “he’s 46 and still beat you!”. It’s one way traffic fighting Hopkins, if things start to look bad for him then the fight is going to turn into a fiasco for everyone, it’s Bernards speciality, you will not beat him up, because if he can’t win it he’ll make damn sure that a fight doesn’t happen that night, whether it involves faking low blows, clinching for 12 rounds and rubbing his head in your face while repeatedly looking to the referee as if his opponent has instigated the dirty tactics, anything goes in that situation, anything except a boxing match. I cannot see what Carl Froch would gain by beating Hopkins, it’d definitely go to the cards because it’d be a clinch fest, it’d be ugly and the judges would be so hard to pick through things that it’d be close and notch up yet another fight where Hopkins can say he was hard done by.

I would much rather see a fight against Bad Chad for Carl, he’s far more interesting as an opponent and would provide a definitive victor either way. A Pascal rematch isn’t that interesting in my opinion, it’d be in Canada and that would require a KO even though Pascal does gas but in Canada winning by a few round wouldn’t be good enough to win, it would require a shut out from Froch to take Pascals belt. Froch could fight a Canadian though but at SM if Bute were interested, that would also be an interesting match. I think Bute is another hype job, and I certainly don’t think he’d be as dangerous as his mythological legend offers if he were faced against a guy who hits back with the same awkward angles and easily as hard.