Carl Froch and the magic of Queen

This is Nottingham5th June, 2009

WHEN a boxer prepares for a title fight you'd expect pumping house or thrash metal to be in his ears. But when Carl Froch was in training ahead of his bout with Jermain Taylor in Connecticut, he was listening to country music.

"I'm a big fan of Johnny Cash," he says.

"Usually I'll listen to Johnny when I'm running. It's quite slow, steady music. I can't listen to fast, hard-paced music, it gives you a headache. Jabbing to the speed of the rhythm is no good. Johnny Cash music is quite mellow - a little bit of country, soft guitar and that... I can run to that.

"When I was training for the Denis Inkin fight in Tenerife, running up Mount Teide, it was really hard, mind-blowing stuff. To get up that mountain, with the air so thin... Johnny Cash got me up there, really."

Such is his passion for country, I hear he's recorded an album?

"(Laughs) A country album? No. I play the guitar. I did a couple of Johnny Cash numbers at my 30th birthday. But it seems to have echoed around. You know what Chinese whispers are like...

"Me and Dennis Coath from Central News, we did a little number in Ireland before my world-title fight. We did Folsom Prison Blues. I was playing the guitar and singing and he was singing with me.

"It was a good little piece on the local news. Well, everyone was cracking up laughing anyway. Laughing at us rather than with us."

Not that Carlton-born Froch, 31, is one-track-minded with his music preferences.

"The first album I bought was Snoop Doggy Dogg's Doggystyle on cassette. That's how diverse my music is. From rap to Johnny Cash. You couldn't get much more chalk-and-cheese."

He adds: "I grew up listening to Motown and soul. My dad was a big fan and used to play that all the time.. I bought a Motown CD the other day, actually."

And if there was one album he'd take with him to a desert island, it'd be Queen's Greatest Hits.

"My step-dad is a massive Queen fan. I was listening to the Greatest Hits when I was over in Canada. For some reason it was in my portable DVD player. So I was listening to that in the gym in the build-up to the Taylor fight."

The entrance music for his successful WBC title defence was Queen's We Will Rock You.

"It's a big crowd-pleaser," he says, wrapping his hands ringside at Liberty Gym in Sneinton Market, ahead of a mid-week training session.

"It's very British, everyone knows the song, everyone gets behind it and stamps their feet, claps their hands. It's good for raising the atmosphere in an arena."

It's one of the reasons he's a supporter of the Notts-based Queen tribute band Mercury, who've been touring together for ten years.

The Froch family plan to turn up to see them at their next gig, at Gedling Miners' Welfare next Friday.

"A few years ago Freddie Mercury's mum gave me a pendant," says Joseph Lee Jackson, Mercury's Freddie. "It's a miniature of the 10ft statue of Freddie that's in Montreaux, where Queen had a studio. Which is a nice bit of memorabilia."

Mercury have toured all over the world, including a New Year's Eve show at the Millennium Stadium in front of 15,000 people.

Prior to joining the band, Jackson, who knows Froch from when the boxer lived in Newark, was in musical theatre. Being Freddie on stage is also a form of acting, he says.

"We're not just a sound-alike band we're a look-alike band as well. We try and portray the band as closely as we can."

Froch isn't sure if he'll be around for the gig as he's busy running a property company when he's not training.

"I don't really go to gigs to be honest. I've been to a few James Blunt concerts and Girls Aloud. Quite cheesy stuff really."

Is that because the missus wanted to go?

"No. I go down to the Arena to show my face because of my boxing profile. If I get invited down I go down."

Mercury, with support from Laura Elson, play Gedling Miners' Welfare, Friday June 12, £15, 7.15pm, 0115 952 6409.

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