Bika wants Froch unification fight

By Boxing News - 12/24/2013 - Comments

froch56236By Scott Gilfoid: WBC super middleweight champion Sakio Bika (32-5-3, 21 KO’s) smells blood and weakness from IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch (32-2, 23 KO’s) following his controversial 9th round stoppage victory over George Groves last month, and Bika wants to fight Froch next to take his belts from him once and for all.

Bika saw how Froch was badly hurt by Groves in getting knocked down hard in the 1st round of their fight, and he feels that Froch was extremely fortunate when the British referee Howard John Foster stepped in to halt the fight in the 9th round when Groves wasn’t hurt.

“I am chasing a fight with IBF/WBA champion Carl Froch,” Bika said via Fightnews. “Froch was very lucky to win his fight against Groves. That was a bad knockdown he suffered…A fight between Froch and me would see who is the ‘King’ of the division. We should fight in Las Vegas.”

I hope Bika doesn’t waste his time waiting on Froch and his promoter Eddie Hearn to agree to fighting Bika in the United States, because I don’t see that ever happening. The only way they agree to a Bika-Froch fight is if it’s in the UK and nowhere else. I wish Bika a lot of luck trying to win a decision over there.

I don’t know about the winner of the Froch-Bika fight being the “King of the division,”, but I could see the winner of that fight as being a #2 or #3, depending on how they would do against the Dirrell brothers. We just saw Bika having to settle for a 12 round draw against Anthony Dirrell this month on December 7th, and that was against a rusty Dirrell who wasn’t fighting smart.

In a rematch, you can bet that Dirrell would make adjustments and beat Bika decisively. And I think Andre Dirrell would take Bika to school and win every round. Bika is made to order for Andre Dirrell. But, yeah, I think the winner of a Froch vs. Bika fight could definitely be a #3 or #4 guy. You can’t call the winner the #1 because Ward already beat Bika and Froch, so that’s silly of Bika to say that. And Bika can’t say he’s better than Dirrell, because he didn’t beat him, and Andre Dirrell, Anthony’s brother, is even better than him. So you’ve got to assume that both Dirrell brothers are better than Bika, which means that the Froch-Bika winner would still have to prove that they’re better than the Dirrell brothers to prove that they’re the #2 guy at 168.

Bika might be Froch’s way out of having to fight Groves again. With Bika calling him out, Froch can use this as an excuse for why he shouldn’t have to fight Groves for a second time, because unification bouts are a lot bigger deals than regular title defenses.

Froch has said that he’d like to fight Andre Ward, Gennady Golovkin and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., but those fights aren’t going to happen in 2014. Let’s be real about that. Froch won’t get any of those fights, although he could get the Ward fight if he really wanted it. I don’t think he or his promoter Eddie Hearn want that fight, so it’s probably just Froch flapping his gums just to hear himself talk. The only options for Froch in 2014 are Bika, Groves or James DeGale, unless Froch wants to defend one of his titles against someone like Thomas Oosthuizen or Stanyslav Kastanov for a safe title defense. Oosthuizen isn’t really a safe choice for Froch, because he can fight. But it’s a lot safer than Froch fighting the likes of DeGale, Groves, Ward, Golovkin, Chavez Jr. or Bika.

At the end of the day, I see Froch ignoring Groves permanently and choosing instead to fight Bika in a unification bout.



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