By: Hans Themistode
Former unified Super Middleweight champion Carl Froch has always been confident. Maybe even too confident. But wins over Jean Pascal, Jermain Taylor, Andre Dirrell, Arthur Abraham, Lucian Bute, Mikkel Kessler and George Groves gives him the perfect ammunition to think he was the best.
When Froch retired in 2014, he believed that he had nothing left to prove. Other than a rematch with Andre Ward, Froch fought and beat just about everyone in his weight class.
With that being said however, the former unified champ does believe that one fight got away from him.
While Froch was busy winning world titles, there was another fighter in another weight class that was doing the same thing. The only difference is that he was doing so in much more dominant fashion.
Gennadiy Golovkin didn’t just beat fighters, he beat them down. It didn’t make much sense for the unified Middleweight champ to look for competition at his own weight class. So instead, he began looking elsewhere.
Much like this current Coronavirus pandemic, Golovkin was avoided by just about everyone.
The dominance shown by Golovkin made most fighters turn a blind eye to him. Froch on the other hand, turned his attention straight to Golovkin.
The two never jumped into the ring against each other despite nonstop rumors. But that wasn’t from a lack of trying.
“We were in talks with his manager. They were trying to get me down to 166-pounds. That don’t sound like much weight, two-pounds below the [super middleweight] limit. I was a machine at [super middleweight]. I could not have lost another two-pounds and performed. They were just trying to drag me down that bit further. I just said, ‘Look, let’s make the fight and make it at [super middleweight]. You think you’re too much for me, you’ll back me up and knock me out, let’s do it at [super middleweight],” Froch said on the ‘Froch on Fighting Podcast.’
“Don’t forget I was out the ring, this was after I’d been retired a year. Then the talks started to get a bit serious. They were just trying to drag me down to a weight division I wouldn’t have been able to do it in. At the time when we were talking, I was [186-pounds], a lifetime heaviest, so I’ve got to get myself down to [super middleweight] which would’ve been hard. And they were trying to drag me down even further and that’s why the fight didn’t happen.”
At the time, Golovkin was viewed as a monster. The moment he stepped foot inside of the ring with anyone, apprehension immediately set in. In short, the fight just wasn’t going to end well for his opponents.
With 23 straight knockout wins from 2008-2016, Golovkin was being placed in the conversation as the hardest hitting fighter of all-time. For as great as Froch had been throughout his career, many believed that he would have been just another knockout victim. A statement that he finds incredulous to say the least.
“In my opinion I’d beat him up because I’m too big and too strong for him. I might be wrong, we’ll never know, but I would back myself to be beat him. There will be a lot of people listening to this saying, ‘No, no, no, load of b-llocks, Golovkin would beat you. Eventually Golovkin’s power would tell, he’d land on you, he’d hurt you, break you down and stop you. What I’d say to that is I’ve never been stopped, I’ve only ever been put down twice in my career and I got up to win both times,” Froch said.
“You can say either of us are a clear winner. I think I beat him by stoppage. I’d be hitting him that much, that hard. A little bit like the Lucian Bute fight. Back him up to the ropes, back him up, smash him to bits, you know how I roll. What a great fight that would’ve been, and I’m man enough to admit I could’ve come unstuck. I could’ve got my nose broke, I could’ve got my eye cut and been blinded in one eye, I could’ve even got ironed out.
“I never think I’d be knocked out because I’ve been hit with some big, big shots in my career and I’ve felt them, but they never bothered me that much. I’ve never been flattened like Amir Khan, have I.
With Golovkin seemingly past his prime at the age of 37 and Froch retired for six years, there is absolutely no chance that this dream matchup will ever take place. The former Super Middleweight champ simply wanted to set the record straight that he didn’t duck a contest against Golovkin. In his opinion, it was the other way around.