By Scott Gilfoid: Julio Cesar Chavez Jr’s recent loss to Andrzej Fonfara really sucked the wind out of WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch’s sails, leaving him with few options for his next fight. Froch (33-2, 24 KOs) had been dreaming of a fight against the 29-year-old Chavez Jr. for some time, as he felt that it was a match-up that would draw a lot of boxing fans in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Believe it or not, Froch and his promoter Eddie Hearn even saw the Chavez Jr. fight as a pay-per-view event, which makes you wonder if they’d been keeping up on the news of Chavez Jr’s career in the past three years. Whatever the case, Froch is now saying that he’s interested in facing the winner of the May 23rd fight between Britain’s James DeGale (20-1, 14 KOs) and American talent Andre Dirrell (24-1, 16 KOs) at the Agganis Arena, in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
“I said before, James hadn’t earned his stripes but the winner of this one is potentially a big fight for me. Time is running out though,” Froch said via RingTV.com.
There it is. Froch is talking about wanting to fight the winner of the DeGale vs. Dirrell bout. Only Froch knows if he’s just flapping his gums or if he’s dead serious about wanting to face the winner of that fight. If Froch is truly serious, then he could find himself in a rematch against Dirrell, a fighter who got the better of Froch six years ago in their fight in what some boxing fans call the “robbery in Nottingham.”
Froch was arguably schooled for 12 rounds by Dirrell, and then surprisingly given the victory. Froch looked more surprised than anyone there when his hand was raised. The look on his face was priceless. It was as if Froch was thinking ‘they gave this to me?’ Ever since that fight, Dirrell has wanted a rematch against Froch, but he’s shown no interest in getting back in the ring with the American fighter. But if Froch is now putting himself on the line by saying that he’ll fight the winner of the DeGale vs. Dirrell fight, we could see Froch put in a situation where he’d be facing the guy that dominated him in the past in Dirrell.
Of course, Froch could always choose to back out of the fight by saying he wasn’t serious or that Dirrell doesn’t motivate him enough to get out of bed in the morning for him to make his long runs and go through the hardship of training camp, but that would be on him. If Dirrell beats Degale, which I think he will, he’s going to have Froch’s old IBF title and it’ll be up to Froch if he wants to do anything about it.
“When I fought him he ran, held 10 times a round, and boxed off the back foot,” Froch said to RingTV.com about his controversial win over Dirrell in 2009. “In one of the later rounds he stood in front of me and gave it a go but, overall, I don’t think he’s got the bottle. You need desire and heart when you’re fighting for a world championship and it remains to be seen if he has that.”
If you go back and watch the tape of the Froch-Dirrell fight, you’ll see that Dirrell was hardly running from Froch. What he was doing was pot shotting him and making him miss with his wild shots. The fight got ugly in the 5th when Froch started fouling and continued to foul up through the 11th round. Why the referee let Froch get away with the fouling is hard to understand. It was pretty blatant and it made the fight look like an MMA fighter vs. a boxer. Dirrell ended up staggering Froch in the 10th round after being penalized for clinching, which Dirrell appeared to be doing because he kept getting nailed by rabbit punches. The referee ignored the dangerous rabbit punches Froch was throwing and instead took a point off from Dirrell for him clinching.
I get the impression that Froch would like to face DeGale because it would be a fight that would sell in the UK. But I don’t think for a second that Froch will give the green light to Hearn for a second fight against Dirrell. If Dirrell beats DeGale, I see Froch retiring rather than facing Dirrell.
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