By Scott Gilfoid: WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (27-1, 20 KO’s) is facing his worst nightmare in pressure fighter Glen Johnson (51-14-2, 35 KO’s) next month in their Super Six tournament semifinals bout at the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. For a fighter that struggled under the pressure from Mikkel Kessler in a losing effort a year ago, Johnson is like Kessler X 2. He’s much tougher than Kessler, as Johnson doesn’t let up for a second.

Johnson is going to keep Froch going backwards all night long, as we’ve already seen how Froch can’t fight while backing up. Froch is going to have to change his game altogether if he wants to win this fight, and you know what they say about old dogs not being able to learn new tricks. Froch used to pride himself on his stamina. Well, we saw how great Froch’s stamina was when he ran out of gas under the pressure from Kessler last year.

Johnson is going to expose Froch’s stamina issues as well by keeping him under a constant rain of punches. Froch will no doubt be Froch. He’ll try to fight back for five or six rounds, but when sees his energy reserves running low, we’ll see Froch’s self preservation instincts kick in with him running all around the ring to try and survive to the final bell.

In an article at Sky Sports News, Froch said “He [Johnson] is a wily old fox and has been in tehre with the best of them and beat some of the best, so I am going to be totally aware of my enemy. I am confident that I am fit an strong and I have the ability and the game plan to do what I need to do to beat Johnson.”

I can already guess Froch’s game plan. He’s going to initially try to hit and move in the early going. But believe me, Froch’s game plan is going to be scrapped almost immediately once he tastes some of Johnson’s hard licks. Froch will then probably get angry and get caught in a war that he can’t win. He’ll continue to trade with Johnson until he runs out of gas and then we’ll see Froch in a full scale retreat for the second half oft he fight. It will be one of those hasty retreats with no real strategy behind other than survival.