Froch admits he’s scared of losing to Groves

By Boxing News - 11/12/2013 - Comments

froch564By Scott Gilfoid: In a refreshing confession, IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch (31-2. 22 KO’s) admitted that he’s afraid of getting beaten by challenger George Groves (19-0, 15 KO’s) for their fight in less than 2 weeks at the former Manchester Arena in the UK.

Froch says he’s training harder than ever because of the way that Groves has shown him no respect in their meetings with one another. Froch wants to pound Groves in the ring, and he says he had to control his instincts to take a swing at him at their recent press conference.

Froch said via the Telegraph “I cannot lose to this guy. I’m more scared of that. It makes me more nervous, because of him. He has given me the motivation, I’m self-motivated anyway, but Groves has fired me up with his attitude. He’s done himself up.”

It’s good that Froch is admitting that he’s afraid of getting beaten by Groves, because that shows that he takes him very seriously. You can guess as much about Froch being worried about losing to him simply by looking at how agitated and nervous Froch looked in his recent appearance with Groves on Sky Ringside. But it wasn’t just in that meeting that Froch showed signs of worry, he also looked as nervous as a rat from a cat in his interview with Jhonny Nelson with Groves. Froch’s voice was cracking during the interview, and he seemed to come unglued each time that Groves would make a comment questioning his legacy.

Groves doesn’t understand why Froch is so preoccupied with him showing respect to him for his past accomplishments. To Groves, this is a sign of insecurity and weakness on Froch’s part that he should want his opponents to be showing him respect. Groves sees this as a waste of time for Froch to be looking for things like that, and he chalks it up as Froch having some issues about his own legacy. It does seem incredibly weird that Froch even cares about what his opponents think about his past fights. Froch should be a machine by now at this point in his career and above being bothered by what this or that fighter thinks of him, his talent and his career as a whole.

It’s going to be interesting to see if Froch does actually punish Groves like he says he’s going to do. The fact that Froch is training harder than he usually does could result in him over-training and coming into the fight less than his best. When you’re as old as the 36-year-old Froch, you don’t want to be overdoing it in training camp because there’s too high of a risk that you’ll leave your best in the gym rather than the fight. In other words, more isn’t better when it comes to training when you get older.

You’re supposed to be training smarter by that point. The only way that training harder will help Froch is if he’s been training at 80 percent of his maximum level for his past fights. If that were the case, then it would help Froch if he trains harder for the Groves fight. But I have a feeling that Froch has been maxing out with his foot all the way to the floor on the accelerator in his past training camps, so if he tries to do more in this camp, he’s only going to end up hurting himself by coming into the fight a worn out shell.



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