By Scott Gilfoid: Well, it looks like the contract negotiations between IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch and the former WBC 160lb belt holder Julio Cesar Chavez Jr are moving ahead regardless of Chavez Jr’s promoter Bob Arum saying that there isn’t going to be a fight between them.
Froch’s trainer Rob McCracken says the contract negotiations are progressing between Froch and Chavez Jr. Nothing has been agreed upon yet, but the negotiations are ongoing.
This is going to be interesting because Arum is talking about litigation if Chavez Jr faces Froch outside of his contract with Top Rank. It’s unclear if Arum would be able to stop the fight ahead of time though.
Froch really wants the Chavez Jr fight for some reason, as he believes that the Mexican fighter has a large enough fan base to make a fight between them a pay-per-view bout in the United States. The fight might wind up on pay-per-view, but Froch could wind up very, very disappointing in the PPV numbers for the fight.
Chavez Jr’s stock has dropped in a major way in the United States since his loss to Sergio Martinez in 2012, and in Chavez Jr’s last fight in March of 2014, he didn’t bring in a huge attendance at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, and his ratings on HBO weren’t huge numbers.
Froch could end up wishing he’d faced someone else like Gennady Golovkin. Of course, Froch’s chances of beating Chavez Jr is arguably much higher than it would be if he were to face Golovkin, so there’s a certain logic in Froch taking the Chavez Jr fight rather than the Golovkin match-up.
Chavez Jr just went life and death twice with the smaller middleweight Brian Vera, and he looked poor in both fights. Froch and his management are obviously looking at what appears to be the path of least resistance in targeting Chavez Jr instead of Golovkin, Andre Ward, Sergey Kovalev, Adonis Stevenson or the dangerous Dirrell brothers.
“We are still going through the Chavez offer and whether that will happen at the end of March,” McCracken said via Skysports.com. “Nothing has been confirmed yet, but we are in talks about Carl fighting Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. It’s moving in the direction that Carl will fight Chavez shortly, but obviously it’s not been done yet.”
Fighting Chavez Jr rather than Golovkin gives Froch a better chance of ending his career on a high note rather than a knockout loss. Froch wants to fight in front of the bright lights of Las Vegas, Nevada, because that’s something he says he’s been wanting to do in a long time. He can obviously accomplish that goal if Arum doesn’t have the fight stopped. However, the ticket sales might not be all that good for the fight, and like I said about the pay-per-view numbers, they’re probably not going to be very high. Froch is only known among the hardcore boxing fans in the United States, so having him as an opponent is probably no better than some of Chavez Jr’s past opponents like Sebastian Zbik, Billy Lyell and John Duddy.
There’s no way you could see Chavez Jr vs. any of those guys on pay-per-view and expect big numbers or even good numbers. It’s very likely to be the same with Froch facing Chavez Jr. For Chavez Jr to do well on pay-per-view, he needs guys like Miguel Cotto, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Golovkin. In other words, people who are known in the United States and who have a huge following. Froch, I hate to say it, is an obscure fighter in the U.S when it comes to the casual boxing fans.
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