Hearn: Groves will have to wait until next year to fight Froch

By Boxing News - 06/06/2013 - Comments

groves43132By Scott Gilfoid: If George Groves (19-0, 15 KO’s) really has his heart set on a fight against IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch (31-2, 22 KO’s) then he’s going to have to wait until next year in the summer, says Froch’s promoter Eddie Hearn.

He wants to match Froch up against someone else this winter, probably Mikkel Kessler again, and then look to make the Froch-Groves fight next year in the summer time in an outdoor stadium. Hearn figures that Groves should have a world title in his possession by that time, making a Groves-Froch fight even bigger.

Hearn said to Sky Sports News “We [Froch] will look to fight this winter and then lead into a big stadium fight next summer [against Groves]. I believe by then George will be world champion which would make this fight one of the biggest the country has ever seen.”

I hardly see a Groves-Froch fight being the biggest fight ever in the UK. I think Hearn is kidding himself there. I doubt that it will even do as good as Froch vs. Kessler 2. Let’s be real here. Froch vs. Groves isn’t a huge fight, at least not in my mind. That’s local stuff and not huge.

If I’m Groves, I wouldn’t bother fighting Froch if I pick up the WBO title. If the guy doesn’t want to fight you now and is talking about you needing to wait and wait and wait, I wouldn’t bother fighting him.

If Groves picks up the WBO title off of Robert Stieglitz in 2013 or early 2014, I’d say forget it and focus on just defending the title. Froch had his chance and he blew it. That would be how I would play it.

The way that Hearn is talking, it’s almost as if he won’t bother putting the Froch-Groves fight together unless Groves has a strap. Forget that. If Groves isn’t worthy of a title shot now then I wouldn’t bother fighting Froch if I were Groves once I got the WBO strap.

Groves has other big fights he can get, like Andre Ward, Andre Dirrell, Anthony Dirrell, Thomas Oosthuizen, Adonis Stevenson, Chad Dawson, Lucian Bute or Bernard Hopkins. Hearn would have to understand that Froch blew his chance when he could have fought Groves when he was on his way up.



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