Arise, King Cobra

Boxing News - Tris Dixon27th April, 2009

PROMOTER Mick Hennessy and trainer Robert McCracken have always maintained Carl Froch is a "special" fighter.

Of course, as a promoter, it's Mick's job to keep telling people that. McCracken, however, would never have said it - let alone kept on saying it - if he did not believe it.

If someone's a good fighter, they are "good." If they are okay, then that's what he calls them. But all along, Hennessy and Robert (who was nothing shot of excellent in the corner on Saturday) have maintained Froch is "a bit special."

And special people do special things.

What happened at the Foxwoods on Saturday night was, by any stretch of a vivid imagination, special. Froch's dramatic come from behind knockout of Jermain Taylor was about as disbelieving a storyline as one could choose to invent.

But don't get me wrong, this was not Devon Loch falling at the last. This was Devon Loch (Taylor), running with an unassailable lead - having cleared the last only to find a horse with superior staying power and a stronger will to win powering past the post to clinch a spectacular triumph.

The Daily Mail's Jeff Powell, who has witnessed a lifetime of sporting excellence from epic international football clashes to titanic slugfests in the ring and from reckless brilliance on a racetrack to the classy finesse exemplified on a cricket square, wrote in his Froch-Taylor report that it was "one of the most thrilling events of our recent sporting times."

His stablemate and sparring partner, Darren Barker, said he thought he "was watching a Rocky film."

"When I first saw the result I saw it was TKO 12 I wondered what the scoring was like up to then]," said the Commonwealth middleweight champion who found out the result on Sunday morning before watching highlights on YouTube and then the whole fight on ITV later on.

"He got caught big rights [in the third] and I was impressed with Taylor. I don't know if I'm a bit bias but I really fancied Carl to do a good job on him but Taylor was fast, looked sharp and countered well."

Powell criticised the "blinkered" UK television executives who failed to purchase live rights to the fight, telling them what they had missed out on (and how they had "deprived" the British public of a spectacular night) - after the boxing media had spent weeks warning them of the same thing.

If ever there was a fight that looked as though a boxer would run up an early lead but have to fight tooth-and-nail to hang on to it, this was it. And that's what happened.

I could go on all day about how writers who cover boxing for a living on both sides of the Atlantic told the executives something special was likely to happen as they looked forward to the fight the same way a Springer Spaniel looks forward to a walk.

What should be remembered, too, is that it is not only UK television that vetoed showing the fight live (although ITV picked it up on a delayed basis) but HBO - the boxing power-mongers in the US - did not want it either, hence its appearance on Showtime. Now that, too, is exceptionally worrying.

When I wrote a column about the UK blackout a month or so ago, I said the TV executives should hang their heads in shame then. Now they should cover them in embarrassment.

Something I also said from the start, and maintained, was that Hennessy Sports and Froch deserved an enormous amount of credit for taking the fight in the US when Taylor was content to look at other options rather than face the champion he was the mandatory challenger to.

It was an audacious first defence by any standards and Froch went in as the underdog with most bookmakers. There are not many promoters in the world who would let their only world champion do that, if any.

An ex-pro, whom I respect, told me on Friday it was "stupid move." He felt the Froch cash cow should have been milked a few times in Nottingham before such a fight was taken.

It does not look such a bad move now, does it?

Froch apparently had a $700,000 guarantee but is surely going to be worth at least $1 million for his second defence. The whole fight was to do with speculating to accumulate. It was a calculated gamble, and a bloody big one at that. It looked like backfiring in spectacular (how else) fashion in the third when Froch was dropped heavily, too. But Carl came through. He had to.

They had to put Carl's unbeaten record, his title and reputation on the line in order to raise his US profile and get him into the big matches he craves with the likes of Kelly Pavlik, Mikkel Kessler and Lucian Bute.

You see, for Froch, it's not about the money. It's about being the best super-middleweight in the world and a pound-for-pound ranked fighter.

When this fight was made I wrote that fortune favours the brave, but there was actually little fortunate about what happened. It boiled down to will, skill, guts, determination and self-belief.

Froch has all of that in abundance. Not only does he possess that irresistible will but he knows how to win. He did it against Pascal when he had to change tactics mid-fight and he did it against Taylor when the chips were down.

Can he do it against fellow super-middle champs Kessler and Bute, or Hennessy's preferred target before the fight, Pavlik?

Kessler looks the hardest of three. Bute would probably draw the biggest money seeing as he and Froch are superstars in Canada (the Canadians have taken to Froch after his win over Pascal and for setting up his camp in Niagara Falls for this fight) whereas victory over Pavlik would raise his profile further still in the US. Although Froch said, unsurprisingly, he was game for a rematch he needs to consider a couple of things. Would Taylor have given him a rematch if the boot was on the other foot? Really? No chance. If Taylor had won they would be looking for someone like Roy Jones or an easy first defence in Arkansas.

And what would he gain from whipping Taylor again anyway? It's not like this fight was controversial.

Froch is not looking at the long, long game. He sees his career lasting another four years, boxing three times each year so another 12-or-so more fights.

Perhaps he could have an easier fight in Nottingham next, or somewhere else in the UK. But I reckon that is unlikely. I can't see him wanting to take a backward step, even though it could be prudent to do so. It's not in his make-up and he wants to keep motivated for each fight and motivation comes easily when you box high-calibre opponents.

Either way, there should be plenty more to come from Carl.

Because the thing is this; on Saturday night, Froch was not even fighting close to his best. He was operating at barely 70 per cent of what he can do throughout the fight. He made a nervy start. He never got his jab going properly. He wasn't busy enough in the first half. He neglected the body and the amount of times he threw his best shot, the right uppercut, barely registered at half-a-dozen. His head movement was poor, his hands too low and his footwork sometimes untidy.

As he said afterwards, despite the hyperbole around him: "It was a sub-par performance."

"He's got loads more than that," added Barker.

It sounds ridiculous given the outcome but you can understand his sentiment.

Yet, as McCracken and Hennessy say, Froch is a "special" fighter. Imagine how he will be when he fights a top fighter and boxes somewhere close to his potential for 12 rounds.

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