By Scott Gilfoid: Promoter Eddie Hearn has selected light heavyweight Yusaf Mack (31-4-2, 17 KO’s) for his fighter IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch (29-2, 21 KO’s) to make his first title defense of his International Boxing Federation belt against on November 17th at the Capital FM Arena in Nottingham, England. There’s not much reason to like this unless you’re into watching Froch beat up on guys that are out of their class like 32-year-old Mack.

Mack will have to take off seven pounds just to get down from 175 lbs to 168 to fight Froch, and that’s probably not going to help Mack’s game any. He’s already been knocked out recently against both Tavoris Cloud and Glen Johnson, and I don’t understand what made Mack so appealing to Hearn for a fight against Froch, other than the fact that Mack has struggled each time he’s stepped up agaisnt guys that can punch a little. He’s been knocked out by Librado Andrade, Cloud, Alexandro Berrio and Glen Johnson. You can soon add Froch’s name to that growing list.

When a fighter gets knocked out like Mack was in his loss to Cloud, I’d like to see him fight some quality fighters to show that he’s back before getting a title shot like this. Having a fighter get knocked out badly by Cloud and then beat these two guys – Omar Sheika and Sabou Ballogou – to get title shot just seems wrong to me. Good god, is that all it takes for a fighter to get a title shot nowadays?

I’m frankly surprised that the IBF has blessed this fight. After all, Mack isn’t even ranked in the super middleweight division. I know he’s ranked #6 by the IBF at light heavyweight, but that’s basically it. None of the other sanctioning bodies in the top 15 in the light heavyweight division and I can understand why.

I see Mack as a bottom 30 or 40 type fighter at light heavyweight, not someone that should be ranked #6 by the IBF. The guys ranked below him, Dawid Kostecki, Jean Pascal, Cornelius White and Denis Grachen, just to name a few, are guys that I consider to be much better fighters than him.

It looks like Hearn doesn’t want to take any chances of Froch getting possibly beat if he were to match him up against someone good from the super middleweight division. Froch has a rematch coming up early next year against Lucian Bute in Montreal, Canada, and possibly a rematch against Mikkel Kessler and it looks like Hearn doesn’t want to risk Froch missing those well paying bouts.