By Sean McDaniel: WBA/WBC super middleweight champion Andre Ward (25-0, 13 KO’s) paid Carl Froch (28-2, 20 KO’s) a big compliment when he said he feels Froch is the No.2 fighter in the super middleweight division. Ward says this even though IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (29-0, 24 KO’s) is still unbeaten, and Mikkel Kessler has a win over Froch last year and hasn’t been beaten since then.

Ward said this to eastsideboxing.com’s On the Ropes Boxing Radio Program: “You can arguably consider Carl Froch the number two super middleweight in the world…He was able to beat Andre Dirrell and had a nip and tuck type fight with Mikkel Kessler.”

I can see where Ward is coming from on this. Froch has taken part in the Super Six tournament and beaten Dirrell, Arthur Abraham, and Glen Johnson. The losses he suffered were to Kessler and Ward. Kessler dropped out of the tournament and likely would have been beaten by either Froch or Ward. As for Lucian Bute, he hasn’t faced the best opposition in the last three years and has had a pretty easy ride.

You can understand why Ward would choose to rank Froch over Bute just on the better competition Froch has faced in the past two years compared to Bute. But it’s really hard to tell who really is the 2nd best fighter. Bute is hard to beat, but Froch would be a really tough for him, as would Kessler. That might even be a tougher fight for Bute than Froch, because Kessler has a better jab than Froch and is excellent and throwing hooks and catching his opponents with big shots.

If Kessler was to hit Bute with one of his big shots, we could see Bute flattened. I think it comes down to style matchups. Froch might be a tougher fight for Kessler than Bute because he’s willing to take shots and pressure. Bute is more of a crack and run fighter. If he can’t hurt you with his uppercut, he backs away and tries to jab.