By Scott Gilfoid: Injured heavyweight David Haye questions whether Grove Groves (19-1, 15 KO’s) will have the same kind of success in his rematch on May 31st against his good friend IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch (32-2, 23 KO’s) as he did in his previous fight against the 36-year-old Froch last November. Haye thinks that Groves won’t be able to hurt Froch like he did before because Froch will be wary of Groves power, and won’t leave himself open for the big shots that Groves was nailing him with for the entire fight.
“I think the opportunity for him [Groves] to do what he did in the first fight and surprise Carl is gone,” Haye said to Sky Sports. “You can’t surprise someone with the same trick twice. I don’t think George will have the same success as he enjoyed in the first fight because never in a million years did Carl expect to be hit and hurt that early on. He’ll be a lot wiser now.”
What Haye is saying makes absolutely no sense at all, but I can see why he might want it to be true given that Froch is his good friend. Groves wasn’t just nailing Froch in the 1st round. He was tagging Froch with monstrous shots in first 7 rounds, and it’s not as if he only enjoyed success at tagging Froch with big punches in the 1st.
Yeah, Groves wasn’t able to put Froch down again after the 1st, but he was having all kinds of success in tagging him with right hands and left hooks. Froch was getting hit with some vicious shots in rounds 2-7, and I don’t see how he was coming out ahead. Why anything would be different in the rematch is the big question. If Froch was wide open for shots against Groves, Andre Ward and Andre Dirrell, he isn’t all of a sudden going to learn how to block punches now that he’s about to turn 37 in July.
Sorry, Haye, but Groves will nail Froch with big shots from start to the likely bloody finish on May 31st, and there’s not a thing he’ll be able to do about it.
The only things that Groves needs to improve on is avoiding clinches due to Froch’s habit of throwing rabbit punches, and he needs to pull away from Froch in a quicker manner to avoid getting hit when he’s backing away after throwing his shots. Simply backing up while covering up like a sparring partner won’t work for Groves. He’s got to figure out how to get in and out quickly. I’m really hoping that the referee working the fight will stop Froch from throwing rabbit punches and hitting on the break, but I seriously doubt that happen unless they get a good referee like Jay Nady to work the fight. Nady wouldn’t put up with rabbit punches or hitting on the break.
It doesn’t matter if Froch can take the power shots from Groves, he’ll still end up losing the fight if Groves can keep from running out of gas like he did last time.
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