By Scott Gilfoid: Challenger George Groves (19-1, 15 KO’s) sees IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch (32-2, 23 KO’s) in a no-win situation for their fight on May 31st at the Wembley Stadium, in London, UK. Groves feels that no matter what Froch does in this fight, he’s going to get beaten. Froch’s lack of hand speed, defense and mobility will be his undoing in the fight, says Groves. More importantly, Groves feels that Froch has already mentally accepted that he can’t win this fight, and he’s just looking to play out his string, take his loss and then retire immediately after their rematch.
Groves said to Ringside, “Froch doubts himself. He seeks reassurance. He needs to feel love, to be told constantly that you’re doing well, you’re doing great. Whether he’s on his A-game…he’s still not going to be quicker than me, he’s still not going to have better movement than me, he’s still not going to have a better defense than me. I’m still going to hurt him every time I hit him. It doesn’t matter if he does more miles or if he over-trains or under-trains or if he feels good in himself, it still makes no difference to the facts and the technical breakdown of each of us. He’s out of his depth, he can’t win. And everything he’s doing now in the build up to the fight is for acceptance. He’s accepted that he can’t win the fight; he understands that he can’t win the fight. The acceptance is constant enough to get the training done. He knows he’s in a big fight, and is going to earn a lot of money. He’s going to retire after he loses.”
Froch’d body language during the entire program was that of a beaten fighter already. Froch’s confidence seemed to be totally gone, and looked meek, defeated and kind of sad. Froch said repeatedly that the things that Groves was saying to him wasn’t getting to him during the program, but with the way that Froch was gritting his teeth, and making peculiar looking facial expressions, it seemed like his confidence was shot. As I mentioned before, Froch looked worn out, sick and not in the position to verbally spar with Groves. This can’t be good for Froch to be a punching bag for Groves during these meetings, because I can see him getting worn down mentally from Groves’ bombardment. If nothing else, Froch should at least try and fight back in order to make himself look better in front of his fans. I can’t imagine that Froch is impressing his fans by letting himself get whipped by Groves like this in their meetings.
The audience seemed uncomfortable with the way that Groves was dumping on Froch in an unrelenting manner, because it was too one-sided. Froch wasn’t even trying to defend himself, and Groves wasn’t backing off one bit during the entire show.
Froch did beat Groves last November in their fight when the referee prematurely stepped in and halted the bout in the 9th, but the fight was pretty much one-sided with Groves pounding Froch until the quick stoppage. In looking at how bad Froch fought in that fight, it’s not surprising that he’s not looking confident. There are a lot of unknowns about this fight. It could be a much different fight with Groves dominating from start to finish, and winning quite handily. Last time the referee blew the fight by jumping on Groves while both guys were still trading, but that referee won’t be working the fight, and it’s likely that this one will be allowed to play out until the bitter end.
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