By Scott Gilfoid: Former unified super middleweight champion Carl Froch says he’s not interested in coming out of retirement to try and avenge his loss to Andre ‘SOG’ Ward.
The 42-year-old Froch (33-2, 24 KOs) says he’d probably lose to the 36-year-old Ward (32-0, 16 KOs), who he feels is a lot younger than him.
Ward beat Froch nine years ago by a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores 118-110, 115-113, and 115-113 in December 2011 in the final of the Super Six tournament. Although expressed interest shortly after that in giving Froch a rematch, he never took him up on the offer.
Now nine years later, Froch still has no desire to return to the ring to face his old nemesis. Interestingly enough, the guy that Froch IS interested in fighting is 47-year-old former two-division world champion Joe Calzaghe.
The problem with that is Calzaghe isn’t interested in coming out of retirement Froch. Calzaghe has looked kind of chunky in recent years, and he would need to take off a lot of weight to give Froch a serious go.
It’s interesting that Froch wishes to fight Calzaghe but not Ward, who hasn’t fought in three years since retiring in 2017.
Froch admits that he’d lose to Ward
“Probably not, no,” said Froch to IFL TV when asked if he’d come out of retirement to face Ward. “He’s been retired for a while. It’s a difficult sell. No one wants to watch him fight. They want to watch me fight.
“Get Ward over to England, and I’d probably take a risk, taking another beating again. It would probably be another loss, wouldn’t it? He’s still quite young, isn’t he? Is he 33 or 34? Was he not 31 or 32 when he retired? I’m sure he’s not even 35 yet. I’m 42.
The only guy I haven’t beaten in my career is Andre Ward. I avenged the Kessler defeat. I didn’t have a bad career, did I? Nobody beats Andre Ward, let’s be honest.
“He’s too hard to beat. It’s all about backing me up, smothering his work, and not letting me hit him and how effective he is. But he’s such a boring f****, I feel. His style is horrible to watch, but he’s good at winning,” said Froch.
As you can see, Froch doesn’t fancy taking a second fight with Ward, and you can’t blame him. Ward neutralized Froch’s offense by fighting him in close and taking advantage of his poor inside game. Froch was at his best when he competed at medium range, where he would throw his pesky jabs and land bombs on his opponents.
He never developed any kind of inside game. On occasion, when Froch did fight in close, he would rough up his opponents. We saw that highlighted in Froch’s controversial 12 round split decision win over Andre Dirrell in the Super Six tourney in 2009.
It’s too bad Froch doesn’t want to fight Ward again because that’s probably about as good as it gets as far as options for him.
It’s unimaginable to see Mikkel Kessler coming out of retirement to face Froch in a rematch, and the same with Lucian Bute and Arthur Abraham. If Froch fought Jean Pascal in a rematch, he’d probably lose. Getting down to 175 could be a problem for Froch.
Carl could have fought Golovkin at 166
“It would have been, but we couldn’t get it,” said Froch, when asked if a fight against Gennadiy Golovkin would have been a good fight. “He wanted me down at 166. Me getting down to 12 stone would have been hard enough.
“When that fight was getting talked about, I’d been retired a year when it was getting close. I was talking to his manager Tom Loeffler in Monaco, and then when talks started to get a little bit serious, it was 166. They wanted to get me below 12 stone. I’m not getting down to middleweight or anywhere in between.
“I’m going to struggle to do super middleweight. Ideally, I wanted to do 175. There’s not an ounce of fat on me, and I’m walking around at 14 stone [196 pounds]. So how am I going to get down to 11 stone 12? So that’s why that fight never happened?
“The only way I’d ever get knocked out, other than by anesthesia, would be to get down to 11 stone 12 against someone like Golovkin. I’m not coming out of retirement to risk getting chinned because I took too much weight off. So it was a non-starter, to be honest. Eddie Hearn was up for it, but you know how he is around a pound note,” said Froch.
It’s hard to believe that Froch wouldn’t lose two pounds to get down to 166 for a big money fight against Gennadiy Golovkin years ago. With the money that Froch would have made fighting GGG, it would have been well worth it.
You can argue that a victory for Froch over Golovkin would have cemented his legacy.
Although Groves did go on to become a world champion after Froch retired, he didn’t have a super career like Golovkin. It’s too bad that Froch chose not to fight Golovkin. But when you hear Froch saying that he weighed 196, then it’s understandable why he didn’t agree to fight GGG.
Of course, if Froch was that heavy, why didn’t he fight at 175?
Froch talks career highlights
“Beating [Lucian] Bute in Nottingham after losing to Ward by a stinking defeat in America,” said Froch in naming one of his best career memories. “To come back to beat Bute, that was a career highlight.
“I lost twice in the Super Six [tournament]. I lost to [Mikkel] Kessler and Ward and then avenged the Kessler defeat. You know what my career has been like—even Arthur Abraham.
“Losing to Kessler in the first fight, and then fighting Arthur Abraham in my very next fight. That was a wicked win. There are too many highlights to pick one as my favorite,” said Froch.
Carl had some excellent wins during his career, but nothing jumps out at you. His victory over Kessler came after the Danish fighter had suffered an injury, and he wasn’t the same fighter that had beaten Froch in the first fight.
Froch’s best wins
- Lucian Bute
- Mikkel Kessler
- George Groves
- Arthur Abraham
- Jermaine Taylor
- Andre Dirrell
- Jean Pascal
- Glen Johnson
Like Ward, Froch retired too early. He still had a good four years left in him, but he opted to hang up his gloves rather than hang around and take on dangerous guys like Adonis Stevenson. Froch would have had to mix it up with Stevenson at some point if he’d continued his career.
