By Scott Gilfoid: If there’s one specific area where there is a clear different between IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch (30-2, 22 KO’s) and WBA super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler (46-2, 35 KO’s) that separates the two fighters going into their May 25th fight this month it’s the vastly superior jab that the 34-year-old Kessler has going for him.
He not only has a better jab, but he’s a lot faster, throws better combinations, moves better and is the better athlete. But the jab is going to be the key to victory for Kessler because I see Froch backing off almost immediately at the start of the fight and looking to make it a jab war after he tastes some of Kessler’s power shots and realizes the hopeless of the situation.
For Froch, it’ll be like putting on an old shoe. Once he starts taking hard combinations to the head from Kessler in the 1st or 2nd rounds, Froch will start remembering what happened to him in his losses to Kessler and Andre Ward in the past, as well as in his controversial 12 round split decision win over Andre Dirrell.
Once Froch starts getting nailed, he’s going to have a flashback experience and won’t it. He won’t like the direction the fight is going and will like to snap out of it the only way he can and that’s by scurrying to the outside and looking to play it safe by throwing jabs rather than risking his head against Kessler’s power shots.
But it’s not going to work out for Froch because he’s going to realize almost immediately that Kessler’s jab is too good for him and he’ll have to come up with some other kind of plan to keep from getting schooled by Kessler. I think Froch will then elect to use movement, which won’t be easy to do because he’s kind of stiff-legged on his feet and not really comfortable with moving his heavy limbs around the ring for any length of time.
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