Will Froch retire if Chavez Jr beats him?

By Scott Gilfoid: Unless promoter Eddie Hearn fails at putting together a fight between IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, it’s looking like we could see Froch and Chavez facing each other in January of next year in Las Vegas, Nevada on HBO.

Froch has talked about potentially retiring in the past if he lost to certain fighters, and luckily for him he was always able to beat the guys that he made the retirement threat about. But I’m wondering if Froch will choose to retire if Chavez Jr beats him? I mean, there would be no reason for Froch to retire.

If he can still make good clean cash fighting George Groves over and over in front of a swarm of fans, then why retire? Froch can also make good cash against fellow Brit James DeGale. The British fans will probably have a short memory of how Chavez Jr beat Froch, and they won’t mind seeing Froch fight DeGale or pretty much anyone that Hearn puts in front of Froch.

The way I see it, Froch will probably walk away from the sport if he gets whipped really bad by Chavez Jr, because it’ll be one of those situations where Froch will think he’s lost it or something.

Rightly or wrongly, Froch likely sees himself as the No.2 fighter in the super middleweight division right now behind Andre Ward. But if Chavez Jr does a number on Froch, then he’ll have to see himself as No.3 in the division, and I think that would be too hard of a blow for Froch to handle mentally.

It’s one thing being No.2 but quite another when you see yourself as No.3. I actually don’t even see Froch as No.3. I have him behind both Dirrell brothers in addition to Ward and Chavez Jr at No.5 in the division. I’m not so certain that Froch could beat Sakio Bika, who can do everything that Mikkel Kessler did in his first fight against Froch, but much better. I see a Bika-Froch fight as a toss-up.

It would look bad if Froch moves off into the sunset off of a loss to Chavez Jr, because it’ll give some fans the opinion that Froch is quitter. When the going gets tough, he cuts out and retires. I mean, he’ll still have all that loot he made during his career, but retiring off of a loss to Chavez Jr might be maddening.