Mack’s trainer: We’re ready for Froch

By Scott Gilfoid: Percy Custus, the trainer for American power puncher Yusaf Mack (31-4-2, 17 KO’s), says they’re ready to defeat IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch (29-2, 21 KO’s) after having studied his style and they know what to do to beat him this Saturday night at the Capital FM Arena, in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom.

Custus told Sky Sports News “He’s [Froch] only a human being…We made a couple of adjustments for Carl Froch because we know a couple of things he’s going to do.”

Let me guess what those adjustments are.

* Don’t back up to the ropes
* Stay in the center of the ring at all times
* Take advantage of Froch’s slow hand speed by throwing fast shots
* Fight Froch on the inside as much as possible
* Counter Froch with right hands if he starts throwing jabs
* Pressure Froch at all times

Froch has got a lot of holes in his game that Mack can take advantage. If you look at Froch’s fights with Andre Dirrell, Mikkel Kessler and Andre Ward, you can see how Froch couldn’t handle pressure and looked timid when his opponents came at him with hard pressure. In contrast, Froch did well against fighters that backed up or only put partial pressure on him.

Froch did well against Glen Johnson, Lucian Bute and Arthur Abraham because those guys didn’t put Froch under any kind of duress. They made a mistake by letting Froch choose when, how and where the fight would be fought. Mack can’t do that. He’s got to make Froch feel the fear by pressuring him so that he fights scared instead of with courage.

Mack has a lot of assets going for him in this fight with his speed and power advantage over Froch. He just needs to make sure he takes advantage of those tools by taking the fight to him from round one until the bitter end.