Carl Froch: I wanted to punch George Groves at pre-fight press conference

Froch, holding court in his home town of Nottingham as he makes final preparations for fight week against young pretender Groves at the sold out Manchester Arena a week on Saturday, was explaining his feeling to underline how motivated Londoner Groves has made him feel ahead of his defence of the WBA and IBF supermiddleweight titles.


Froch explained: “At the press conference I got the feeling that he was just trying to wind me up. I was looking at Groves and thinking ‘If I hit him with the left, I don’t want to hit him in the teeth because the teeth infect your hand’. I’ve had that before.”


“I’ll aim for his nose, I’m thinking. Then I’m thinking ‘I’ll get fined for this, I’ll disgrace the sport,’ and I took a deep breath. My heart was going…,” explained Froch, who intimated that he had experienced that feeling several times when he was growing up in his mother’s public house, with unruly, or drunk customers.


“I’m a sportsman, I’m trained, so I controlled the feeling Groves gave me,” added Froch, who walked away with a determination a rival would not want against a man who has put his mind and body on the line at world level for the last five years, fight after fight.


“I didn’t want to feel like that on Ringside,” added Froch, explaining why he had appeared so reticent to speak with Groves, side by side, in a promotional show for their fight two weeks ago.






“He’s given me that edge, that motivation. More a help than a hindrance. He’s switched me on. If it were just George Groves being humble, and me thinking back to when I knocked him out in sparring, I might have taken it a bit easier for this fight.”

“So if it had been polite George Groves, who’s giving off the vibe of ‘here’s my chance to beat the champ’, I might have been thinking ‘Do I hit the bags as hard, cut the odd corner ?’.”

“I’ve not done that with Groves, because of his attitude. I cannot lose to this guy. I’m more scared of that. It makes me more nervous, because of him. He has given me the motivation, I’m self-motivated anyway, but Groves has fired me up with his attitude. He’s done himself up,” added Froch, who says he was once like Groves.

Summing Groves up, Froch recalled himself a decade ago. “Childish and naïve, Very immature. But he’s 25. I was like that then, at that age, but this is a serious business. But I’ve still got to take him seriously. Boxing is a two-horse race it’s why people