Carl Froch reveals why Gennady Golovkin fight talks failed, insists he would’ve won by knockout
Carl Froch’s last fight came when he famously knocked out George Groves in front of 80,000 fans at Wembley Stadium in 2014.
However, at the time there were a couple of other potential opponents who nearly lured him back for one last hurrah.
A potential Julio Cesar Chavez Jr bout in Las Vegas fell through for 2015 and then talk turned to a possible clash with middleweight beast Gennady Golovkin.
When asked how he’d have fared in the fantasy match-up, Froch said on his Froch on Fighting Podcast: “This is only gonna take five seconds – too big and too strong.
“Back him up, back him up, mess him up.
“When you’re too big for somebody and too strong for somebody, I don’t care that he can punch hard because I can take a punch.
“He’s not gonna be hitting me with 100 big stinking right hands clean on the chin because I’m gonna move out the way of most of them or block most of them.
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“When I lost to Mikkel Kessler, I then fought Arthur Abraham, he was knocking everybody over. He is big and strong, quite a stocky guy, he can punch hard, knocked most people out.
“He was a ‘monster puncher’, but I think I got hit once or twice the whole fight. Totally outboxed him and outclassed him and outmanoeuvred him.
“And the tactics would be the same for Golovkin because I’ve got height and reach on him and I can box.
“People think I’m just a warmonger and I like to stand there and take shots to land shots, but I won two ABA titles, I won a medal in the World Championships, so I have got boxing ability.
“If I use my boxing ability with my tenactiy and my nasty mindset, I could keep myself out of harm’s way with my reach and put shots together when I have to.
“I’ve met Golovkin, he’s about four or five inches shorter than me. I shook his hand and it felt like I was shaking the hand of a wet lettuce.
“I just feel like he’s too small, not tough enough- Alright he can punch hard, but Martin Murray took him eleven rounds.
“No disrespect to Martin Murray, but he’s a domestic level fighter.
“Them fighters don’t last three/four rounds with me, they get beat up.
“So a fight with Golovkin – and I’m not just being big-headed or overselling myself – I always thought, and Rob McCracken always said, ‘You’re too much for Golovkin.’
“He’s not a super-middleweight, he’s not big enough.”
Froch then went on to explain why the fight didn’t happen: “We were in talks with his manager. They were trying to get me down to 166lbs.
“That don’t sound like much weight, 2lbs below the 12 stone [super-middleweight] limit. I was a machine at 12 stone…
“I could not have lost another 2lbs 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 12 stone. You think you’re too much for me, you’ll back me up and knock me out, let’s do it at 12 stone.’
“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 13 stone 4lbs, a lifetime heaviest, so I’ve got to get myself down to 12 stone which would’ve been hard.
“And they were trying to drag me down even further and that’s why the fight didn’t happen.”
Making a final prediction, Froch said: “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*****ks, 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.
“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.
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“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?”
https://talksport.com/sport/boxing/6...vkin-knockout/
