By Ian Aldous: Photo: Tom Casino/Showtime – Carl Froch (27-1) won his first WBC Super-middleweight world championship back in December 2008; his next fight (Vs. Glen Johnson (51-14), Saturday June 4th 2011) will be his first since that very night that will grace mainstream UK television. I was lucky enough to be in Nottingham that night for what was a fight-of-the-year contender.

The fight was broadcast on UK terrestrial channel, ITV. With the fight being a particularly exciting one and the fact that it ushered in a new world title reign for an Englishman, you would expect Carl to have become a huge star over here in the UK. His first defence against Jermain Taylor was shown on a 20-hour tape delay on ITV4. Although the fight wasn’t live and was relegated to a less-viewed ITV channel, at least it was on terrestrial TV. Carl again put in a hard nights work resulting in a last round stoppage of the former undisputed world middleweight champion. ITV then went into financial difficulties and dropped all boxing programming………….

You would think that Carl would have done more than enough to warrant the interest of the UK’s major sporting TV network, Sky Sports. Unfortunately they didn’t and Carl resorted to Primetime TV, a minor PPV channel.

Primetime TV viewers have been treated to Carl’s war with Mikkel Kessler and his supreme display of boxing against Arthur Abraham. Also add his fight with Andre Dirrell to that list, although I’m sure we’d all agree it was a poor fight by Carl’s high standards. For those who still dispute the decision win that went Carl’s way that evening, I’m of the opinion that a draw was a fair result. I don’t think Andre did enough to ‘take’ the belt away from Carl.

Finally, his next title defence against Glen Johnson (51-14) this Saturday 4th June in Atlantic City, will indeed be shown on Sky Sports (I believe control of boxing programming on Sky changed around the time of the Arthur Abraham fight). Hence the change in interest from Sky towards Carl.

I’m sure this seems strange to American fans who have seen Carl fight regularly over the past couple of years on Showtime Sports, that we would allow this lack of TV exposure to one of our world champions.

For someone who consistently excites fans with his fights, why has he been so overlooked by TV networks in this country?

Do you guys agree that Carl has had it pretty tough for these past couple of years?