By Scott Gilfoid: WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (28-1, 20 KO’s) doesn’t have a clue about what he thinks his opponent WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward (24-0, 13 KO’s) will be doing when they meet on December 17th in Showtime’s Super Six tournament finals bout.

Froch doesn’t know whether Ward will crowd him and fight on the inside like he did in his fights against Allan Green and Sakio Bika recently or if Ward will stay on the outside and pick him apart with speedy sniper shots to the head. Froch doesn’t know because Ward changes his game plan quite frequently from fight to fight, and rarely does he looks the same way from fight to fight.

As such, Froch has decided to come up with a couple different backup plans if things don’t work out for him initially. Froch said “It’s hard to tell what to expect…There is a plan A, plan B and plan C. It sounds interesting but I’ve seen Froch fight and he seems to always fight in the same style. The only difference I’ve seen in Froch’s fights is when he went wild against Andre Dirrell in their fight in 2009 when Dirrell was making Froch look bad by dodging his shots and countering him.

Froch started fouling, the referee didn’t do anything, and it turned the bout into some kind of one-way MMA type fight without any controls. The other time I saw Froch fight differently was when he backed off and tried to box Mikkel Kessler last year, and looked terrible doing it. Kessler dominated the action against a passive Froch until the later rounds when Froch woke up and went with his usual brawling style.

I think that’s the only that really works for Froch. He may say he has plan A, B and C, but I think he’s only effective with plan A. If that doesn’t work, Froch is going to mess things up even worse by trying to box Ward from the outside instead of taking the fight to him. In an outside battle, Ward wins every time. If Froch’s trainer is awake, he’ll quickly switch Froch back to his original brawling plan because he’ll get whipped if he tries to box Ward. And forget about a plan C; Froch doesn’t have the talent to beat Ward with different looks. It’s like someone switching to southpaw during the course of the fight and promptly getting pulverized.

It’s too late in the game for Froch to be trying different things. He’s got to go with what got him here and that’s brawling. My advice for Froch is to keep his guard up, not let Ward get too close and try to keep it clean. Froch has no inside game, and if he tries to fight Ward on the inside he’s going to be humiliated. Ward is so much better than Froch at close range that it’s not even funny.

It’s like a man and a boy fighting. Froch never really developed much of an inside game and he’ll be facing a fighter with inside skills that reminds one of Bernard Hopkins at his best. Froch can’t deal with that kind of fighter in close. He’s got to keep the fight at medium range and pray that he can land something hard to get Ward out of there.