By Stevie Ocallaghan: In the halcyon days of undefeated two weight champion Joe Calzaghe, there was a young pretender calling him out by the name of Carl Froch. Froch was the up and coming puncher, undefeated and fancied his chances against the nearly retired champ.
Sounds familiar. But the main difference for me is that Froch deserved a shot against Calzaghe, whereas WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly is in my mind European level.
Joe Calzaghe was a great fighter, very quick hands and had a granite chin, but for me he never defended against the best. Okay, he beat Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones Jnr, but these guys were ten years past there best. Okay, Bernard Hopkins is champ again but really how many of you would now pay to watch a Hopkins fight.
If we look at who Joe fought, Mario Velt, Will McIntyre, Tocker Pudwill, Byron Mitchell, Charles Brewer, can we really say these guys were top notch. The only guy Calzaghe really fought was Mikkel Kessler, and he was impressive there. Now people talk about Jeff Lacy but he only made his name in beating an old Robin Reid.
With Froch, look at his last few fights: Kessler, Lucian Bute, Yusuf Mack, Andre Ward, Glen Johnson, Jermain Taylor, Arthur Abraham, Andre Dirrell and Jean Pascal. I don’t think any fighter fighting today has had a harder shift, and remember Lucien Bute. He was regarded the number one in the division and got blown away.
Cleverly for me is a decent fighter. I think he would beat a 48-year -old B Hop, but a guy who barely scraped a win against Tony Bellew, and no disrespect to Bellew but he’s not world class.
Cleverly has not earned the right to challenge Carl Froch and neither has George Groves.
Whatever you read on boxing forums, you will always get your bigots and racists who live and earn in Britain but will never give a British fighter any credit. These so called writers seem to think that the only place that matters is America.
Like Andre Ward said, and by the way I’m a huge Ward fan, the place to become a superstar is America. Ward is No. 1 in the division and can’t sell a fight out. If you put Froch v Kessler in any city in the U.S it would be a sell out. Ward needs to realize that the fight game is a world game and not just in the land of hope and glory.
After my mini rant I would like to go back to the Froch v Cleverly thing. Carl has maybe three big fights left but at this stage Cleverly isn’t deserving of one of them, and for that matter neither is Groves.
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