By Scott Gilfoid: After sitting around and burning up an entire year of his career waiting on a fight against former WBC 160 pound champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (48-2-1, 32 KOs), IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch (33-2, 24 KOs) may need to go in another direction for his dream fight under the lights of Las Vegas, Nevada, as Chavez Jr. was whipped badly by light heavyweight contender Andrzej Fonfara (27-3, 16 KOs) in quitting on his stool in between rounds after a 9th round knockdown last Saturday night at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.
The fight was so one-sided that you could make an argument that it should have been halted after the 5th or 6th round, because Chavez Jr. was little more than a big punching bag with a coat of fat on him.
Chavez Jr. looked like he wasn’t in great shape after having been out of the ring for the past 13 months. It obviously wasn’t the smartest thing for him to take on a live body like Fonfara in his first fight back after sitting around doing nothing over a year.
For Froch, he now has a big decision to make in terms of what he wants to do with his career. He can sit around some more and continue to age without fighting, he can retire from boxing, or he can get off the couch and make a fight with the likes of Gennady Golovkin, Andre Ward, Andre Dirrell, Anthony Dirrell, Fonfara, Sergey Kovalev, Adonis Stevenson, James DeGale [if he beats Dirrell], or Arthur Abraham. Those are really the only options Froch has. I mean, if he goes ahead and stubbornly chooses to fight Chavez Jr. anyway despite the fact that Chavez Jr. has already been exposed, then his fight is likely going to bring in horrible stats no matter what network the fight is shown on in the United States.
As far as the pipe dream that his promoter Eddie Hearn has about a Froch vs. Chavez Jr. fight being a pay-per-view bout in the United States, it’s not going to happen. If they tried making Froch-Chavez Jr. a pay-per-view fight in the U.S now, it would likely bring in less than 50,000 buys. I can’t see too many people wanting to purchase that fight, if any.
Unless Froch wants to retire, he’s going to need to pick out his next opponent from this bunch if he wants to get the boxing public’s attention: DeGale, Andre Dirrell, Anthony Dirrell, Ward, Kovalev, Stevenson, Fonfara, or Golovkin. If Froch wants to get a lot of respect from boxing fans, he’ll make a risky choice by picking Golovkin, Kovalev or Stevenson. Those guys have a lot of fans, and two of them [Kovalev and Golovkin] are unbeaten still. All of them hold world titles, and that’s definitely a plus. But if Froch doesn’t want any part of any of them, then he can face the next tier of fighters by facing Fonfara, DeGale, Ward or the Dirrell brothers.
My guess is Froch will retire rather than take on any of these above mentioned fighters. These guys are all a huge step up in class than Froch’s last opponent George Groves in my view, and we saw how Froch struggled at times with Groves. Kovalev, Golovkin and Stevenson would have a good chance of beating Froch by a knockout. Indeed, I see them all beating Froch. Heck, I even think Fonfara beat Froch as well. I see that guy as the light heavyweight division’s version of Froch. He threw over 800 punches last night against Chavez Jr, and a fighter that can throw that many punches is going to be dangerous for anyone.
You normally don’t get big guys like that throwing over 800 punches. Fonfara has a steal chin like Froch, and I think he would be pure trouble for him. However, I don’t think you can sell a Fonfara vs. Froch fight in Las Vegas, though. If Froch is still stuck on his dream of fighting in Vegas, he’d have to likely abandon that dream if he fights Fonfara. That’s a fight that only makes sense if you stick it in Chicago, Illinois if Froch wants to fight in the U.S. If not, then the best place for that fight is in Nottingham, UK. Forget about the fight being staged in London, UK. I don’t think there would be enough interest to stage it there.
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