(Photo Courtesy HBO/Ed Mulholland) By Scott Gilfoid: Amir Khan says that WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward, who shares the same trainer and works out at the same gym in Oakland, California, told him that he thinks that George Groves (19-1, 15 KO’s) could out-box IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch (32-2, 23 KO’s) in their clash on Saturday night.
Ward sees Groves as having the better boxing skills, and he’s impressed with the talent that the young 26-year-old Groves has. Ward sees Groves having a lot of things going for him in the talent department for this fight, and he sees victory as being achievable if he boxes Froch.
“When I spoke to Andre Ward last, he thinks George might take the fight because of his superior boxing skills,” Khan said via Skysports.com.”He thinks the last fight would have taken a lot out of Froch, especially when he was put down in the first round. He thinks George will take the fight.”
Whether the previous took a lot out of Froch or not might not matter. If Groves chooses to box Froch like he did in his fight against James DeGale in 2011, there’s probably not a whole lot that Froch can do because he’s a lot slower than Groves and nowhere near as good as him when it comes to boxing.
If Groves focuses completely 100% on boxing Froch instead of slugging with him, it’ll put Froch in a position where he’ll need to look for one punch because he won’t get enough opportunity to throw his flurries like he normally does. Froch generally only does well when his opponent stands in front of him or if they back up to the ropes so that he can charge them like a bull the way he did against Lucian Bute. But when his opponents move to the side the way Andre Dirrell did against him, Froch is essentially helpless and he gets frustrated and stats to foul.
We saw that in the Dirrell fight where Froch lost his cool in the 5th round and body slammed Dirrell. The referee that worked that fight didn’t do anything to control Froch’s fouling of Dirrell from the 5th round on. If Froch loses his cool against Groves tomorrow night, he may have problems because American referee Charlie Fitch likely won’t just stand there watching the fouling without feeling the need to take control over the action and start giving warnings and taking points off.
Khan agrees with Ward that Groves needs to box Froch. Khan said “If George wants to win the fight, he has to box more too. In the first fight, I think he overworked himself by throwing a lot of shots.”
I think it’s pretty much academic at this point that Groves should box Froch instead of electing to stand in front of him and trade shots for 12 rounds. If Groves can ignore the crowd and resist the urge to pay Froch back each time he gets hit by him, he could very well clown Froch on Saturday night by boxing circles around him all night long. It’s up to Groves. His best chance of winning it to use his boxing ability to make Froch look bad for 12 rounds.
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