No-nonsense Froch Is a Welcome Change at BetLM

There are a A lot of box­ers who talk about how they want big fights and insist they want to take on the tough­est chal­lenges. All too fre­quently, though, their actions don’t back up their words.

Carl Froch, though, is not one of those box­ers. And although he’s far from a house­hold name, he should be right near the top of the list when you think of box­ers who will fight any­one at any time in any loca­tion and will put on a great show to boot.

Since late 2008, Froch has fought five times. Four of the five bouts were against cur­rent or for­mer world cham­pi­ons. Two were against fight­ers unde­feated at the time. And three of the five were on the road, where he wasn’t the home­town hero or crowd favorite.

But Froch is 4–1 in those bouts with only a highly con­tro­ver­sial defeat to Mikkel Kessler in one of the best fights of 2010.

Froch has advanced to the semi­fi­nals of Showtime’s Super Six World Box­ing Clas­sic, where on Sat­ur­day at Board­walk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J., he’ll face vet­eran Glen John­son, yet another ex-world cham­pion and the 2004 Fighter of the Year, for the right to meet Andre Ward in the finals.

And though the tour­na­ment hasn’t really suc­ceeded in pro­duc­ing a star, it’s at least opened the eyes of the box­ing world to what it has in Froch.

“Carl Froch is a tremen­dously excit­ing cham­pion and has only been in good fights and the same could be said of Glen John­son,” John­son pro­moter Lou DiBella said. “I think Carl Froch is one of the most under­ap­pre­ci­ated cham­pi­ons in the world. He’s a tremen­dous tal­ent and has great flair in the ring and a lot of piz­zazz out­side of it.”

Froch is com­ing off a stun­ningly one-sided shel­lack­ing of Arthur Abra­ham in which Froch so thor­oughly shut down the for­mer mid­dleweight cham­pion that it seemed almost like a spar­ring session.

Abra­ham was one of the pre-tournament favorites, but he was han­dled like a club fighter.

“It’s not rocket sci­ence to come up with a plan to beat Arthur Abra­ham,” Froch said. “It was just jab­bing, mov­ing and box­ing, the sweet art of pugilism.”

He fig­ures to have a decid­edly more dif­fi­cult time against John­son, a pres­sure fighter who doesn’t just move for­ward in straight lines. John­son is the com­plete pack­age who also isn’t afraid to take two to land one if that is what is required.

Froch, though, expects a bit more nuance to Johnson’s game. Froch’s jab has become a deadly weapon and John­son can’t afford to be on the end of it all night.

Froch stuck almost exclu­sively to box­ing against Abra­ham, because he in essence con­trolled the bout with a sim­ple one-two and a bit of side-to-side move­ment. He’d love to do the same thing with John­son, but if John­son is able to turn it into a fight, Froch won’t shy away.

“I’ll do a lit­tle bit of both,” Froch said. “I’ll box around him and jab, chop, jab, chop, with a lot of com­bi­na­tions. I don’t think it would be wise for him to sit in front of me for too long. If he walks into me, he’s going to be tak­ing on some shots. We’ll see how much the ref­eree thinks he can take. It’s going to be bru­tal if he keeps walk­ing for­ward and taking shots.”

Froch is the type of fighter the Super Six was designed for, a guy with a plenty of tal­ent but a low pro­file who could ben­e­fit from a lot of national tele­vi­sion expo­sure. The con­cept has been great over­all, though it’s been far too drawn out and will be more than two years from start to completion.

And no mat­ter who wins — I’m stick­ing with Ward, my pre-tournament selec­tion — that per­son still will have to deal with the loom­ing specter of Lucian Bute. Bute, the Inter­na­tional Box­ing Fed­er­a­tion cham­pion, was not in the Super Six field, but is per­ceived by many as the best 168-pounder in the world.

Froch can go a long way toward alter­ing that impres­sion by scor­ing dom­i­nant vic­to­ries over John­son on Sat­ur­day and Ward in the finale later this year. Con­tinue to take on Keep­ing on tak­ing the tough­est chal­lenges and sooner or later, some­one is going to notice.

“I just don’t see the need to be fight­ing bums,” Froch said. “The thing I love about the tour­na­ment is that fight after fight, you’re fac­ing some­one who mat­ters. There have been a lot of fights that I don’t think would have taken place had this tour­na­ment not been put together. And for as long as I fight, these are the kinds of fights I want to be involved in. Noth­ing else interests me.”

Or us. Thank­fully, Froch isn’t alone and there are plenty of other fight­ers, includ­ing John­son, who share that attitude.

Hope­fully, though, Froch’s atti­tude will rub off on more of his peers. Noth­ing bet­ter could hap­pen for box­ing if it did.