Mikkel Kessler retiring from boxing

By Boxing News - 02/01/2015 - Comments

By Scott Gilfoid: Former WBA/WBC super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler (46-3, 35 KOs) is saying that he’s retiring from boxing after 17 years as a pro. Kessler will be turning 36 on March 1st, but he hasn’t fought since losing an uninspired 12 round unanimous decision to Carl Froch in May of 2013.

That was the last time Kessler fought and he didn’t look motivated at all in that fight, and it was a very, very winnable fight. Kessler dominated Froch pretty much in the entire second half of the fight once Kessler actually started throwing punches.

”I’ve spent a lot of time considering the fight offers I have received over the past six to eight months,” Kessler said via Skysports.com. “When it came down to it, none of those options were enough to motivate me to get up to the level needed to step into the boxing ring again.”

Kessler had the chance of fighting Andre Ward, James DeGale and George Groves. Heck, he pretty much could have fought anyone in the 168lb division, including the Dirrell brothers. Kessler likely could have gotten big money fights against the likes of Gennady Golovkin, Adonis Steveson, Sergey Kovalev and Jean Pascal if that’s what he wanted. But for some reason Kessler chose not to fight once he got that big payday bout against Froch in their rematch in 2013, and that obviously made things difficult for Kessler when he expressed interest in wanting to get a rematch with Froch.

Kessler probably could have gotten the rematch with Froch if he’d fought anybody, even scrubs in order to stay busy. But with Kessler just sitting around doing nothing by not fighting, it made a rematch between him and Froch something that was a less pressing fight.

Interestingly enough, Froch is now following in the same pattern as Kessler with him sitting around and not fighting for long stretches of time, although he’s not looking for a rematch with Kessler. Instead, Froch wants a fight against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, another inactive fighter. Two inactive super middleweights will potentially going at it in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2015 in a pay-per-view bout.

“I’m mentally stopping my career and will try to move on, but if an incredible offer comes from one of them (Froch or Ward) then I’d be ready,” he added in Ekstra Bladet.

Well, I think Froch and Ward might be interested in fighting Kessler, but if he’s retiring then I don’t know what the point is. Froch seems to be totally dialed in for just one fight against the inactive Chavez Jr, and I don’t know if Froch will keep fighting if he gets blasted out with a body shot in that fight. I mean, it might look really bad if Froch fights Chavez Jr and then Kessler in back to back fights, because those are two inactive fighters who are arguably no longer relevant due to their inactivity. I could understand Froch taking on one inactive fighter, but not two in a row. That would just be really off putting to me.

To me, Kessler hasn’t been the same fighter since he was whipped by Andre Ward in their fight in the Super Six tournament back in 2009. Kessler later defeated Froch in his next fight in 2010, but that was no big deal because Froch had arguably been beaten already in the tournament by Andre Dirrell, but was given what many boxing fan saw as a hometown decision. Three years earlier, Kessler was beaten by Joe Calzaghe by a 12 round decision in a fight that was a lot closer than the scores that were handed down. Ward beat Kessler a lot more decisively than Calzaghe did.



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