By Scott Gilfoid: IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch (29-2, 21 KO’s) thinks for some reason that his fight with light heavyweight contender Yusaf Mack (31-4-2, 17 KO’s) on November 17th will be the last chance for the 32-year-old Mack to fight for a world title in their fight in Froch’s hometown at the Capital FM Arena, in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom.
Froch said in an interview at Sky Sports News “It’s his [Mack] last chance at a world title fight. He’s earned his world title rankings and he’s coming over to try and cause an upset.”
I think Froch doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Mack has an excellent chance of knockout Froch out cold in this fight and taking his strap. In that case I kind of doubt that Mack will vacate his title just so that Froch’s prophecy about Mack fighting for his last world title can come true. But even if Mack does lose on November 17th to Froch, it won’t be Mack’s last chance at a title. In division as weak as the 175 pound class is with weak champions like WBO light heavyweight belt holder Nathan Cleverly, Mack is going to get other future world title shots against the likes of Cleverly, Beibut Shumenov, Tavoris Cloud and Chad Dawson.
Froch doesn’t seem to think Mack has a chance in this fight, and we’ve seen Froch’s cocky attitude about that shown with him mapping out future fights against Lucian Bute, Mikkel Kessler and Andre Ward. What Froch doesn’t realize is that despite the fact that Mack has been beaten a number of times in his career it’s been from guys that have a lot of talent. Mack has suffered defeats against Glen Johnson, Tavoris Cloud, Alejandro Berrio, and Librado Andrade. Those are guys that would give Froch tons of problems.
The only reason Mack lost to those guys was because he ran out of gas. He was competitive in each of those fights before gassing out and losing. With Froch, Mack doesn’t need to worry about fading because he may be able to KO Froch before gasses out. As everyone knows by now, Froch’s chin isn’t the best in boxing and he’s been stunned and dropped in the past. Mack is going to be fighting for survival against Froch and he’s not going to let him just chop him down the way that Lucian Bute did last May.
Froch is going into this fight cocky from his win over Bute, and that’s going to cause Froch to make a lot of mistakes because his feet aren’t on the ground right now. He’s let the win over Bute go to his head the way a lot of fighters would and he thinks he can destroy Mack. That’s not going to happen and we may see a nice little upset on November 17th. I wouldn’t call it a huge upset because I think Froch is tremendously overrated as a fighter. Froch should have a loss against Andre Dirrell, and he was seconds away from losing to Jermain Taylor in their fight in 2009.