By Scott Gilfoid: After failing to defend his WBA title since May of 2014, Carl Froch (33-2, 24 KOs) has now been stripped of the belt by the World Boxing Association. This was the 37-year-old Froch’s last remaining world title, and now he’s back to mere contender status.
This was all predictable though ahead of time, as the WBA ordered Froch to start negotiations with WBA Super World 168 pound champion Andre Ward, who was very interested in taking the fight against Froch. However, it soon clear that the fight wouldn’t get made.
It’s unclear whether negotiations ever really started. There was talk of Froch’s promoter Eddie Hearn wanting Ward to come to the UK and fight in Froch’s hometown of Nottingham, a place where American Andre Dirrell lost a controversial decision to Froch in 2009. That obviously wasn’t going to happen. Ward said he was interested in facing Froch in London, but not Nottingham.
After that there was no word whether Hearn would accept a fight between Froch and Ward in London. It just makes me wonder how serious Hearn and Froch were in wanting to face Ward a second time. Now we have the WBA stripping Froch of his title. It was so predictable that wasn’t even funny.
“We have no problem with the decision from the WBA,” Hearn said via Skysports.com about Froch being stripped of his WBA strap. “Carl has been out of the ring for nearly a year now and there is certainly no guarantee that he will fight again…It’s likely that we will make a further announcement regarding Carl’s future over the next week or so.”
It sounds like Froch may retire from the sport rather than fight on. He had wanted to fight Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in a fight in Las Vegas, Nevada. Unfortunately for Froch, he suffered an elbow injury that removed any possibility of him fighting Chavez Jr. during the summer months. Instead of facing Froch, Chavez Jr. took what he had hoped was going to be a stay busy fight against light heavyweight contender Andrzej Fonfara last month in April, and was subsequently stopped by him in the 9th round. This removed any real chances of a Froch-Chavez Jr. fight. The other options for Froch weren’t nearly as good in terms of easy fights. There were potential fights against James DeGale and Andre Dirrell, but those are fights that Froch could very well lose. Even if he won them, he might end up looking really bad. We already saw Froch face Dirrell six years ago in Nottingham, and Froch looked really confused in trying to deal with Dirrell’s speed, skills and defensive ability.
As for Froch’s WBA title, it will be fought over by Felix Sturm and Fedor Chudinov this Saturday night in Frankfurt, Germany. It’s scary to think of either of those two winning the vacant WBA title because their arguably much more talented fighters in the division than either of them. I think even the recently twice knocked out George Groves could take both of them. There’s talk that if Sturm wins the WBA title, he’ll face WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham in a unification fight in Germany. The winner of that fight will have two of the four world titles at 168.
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