The Curious Case of Carl Froch
By Jeff Stoyanoff
There may not be a fighter in the world who is harder to rate than Carl Froch. On the one hand, Froch sits with an undefeated record. And, it’s not as though he has not fought anyone of note. Froch holds wins over Jean Pascal, Jermain Taylor, and Andre Dirrell in his last three fights. On the other hand, Froch seems to provide the distinct feeling that his undefeated record is always in jeopardy and that his ultimate exposure is inevitably forthcoming. The manner in which he struggled against Taylor and Dirrell makes it hard for some fans to recognize his legitimacy as perhaps the top Super Middleweight in the world. Still, those struggles were wins and that only makes it more difficult to assess his performance. And, all of this only signifies the beginning of the questions in the case of Carl Froch.
A Win forgotten by Time
In December of 2008, Froch squared off against then undefeated Jean Pascal. Froch won a unanimous decision, but the fight itself was a brilliant two way affair from start to finish that clearly underscored the viability of both men as top fighters. Pascal fought well and enjoyed some success against Froch, but was unable to do enough to stem Froch’s aggression and ultimately lost the decision. It was perhaps the first time we were exposed to a dynamic that has come to dominate Froch‘s career. Pascal was a smooth and fluid athlete and his quickness at times made Froch seem a little slow and lumbering. Yet, there was Froch working away showing just enough speed and skill himself to win many of the exchanges and eventually secure the victory. It was not exactly a headline making win for Froch, but perhaps it should have been considering that Pascal has not lost since.
Subsequently, Pascal has gone on to outbox a budding star in the light heavyweight division in Adrian Diaconu, twice. Diaconu has spectacular power, but he was never quite able to find the range against Pascal despite having 24 rounds in which to do it. Yet, Froch was able to consistently land on Pascal throughout and was able to draw him into exactly the kind of fight he wanted. Pascal, no doubt, would have liked to box more, but Froch would not allow that to happen. The fight was compelling and certainly far from one sided, but Froch clearly did enough to win. Yet, while Froch looked good he also appeared a little vulnerable at times especially in dealing with the speed of Pascal. However, what we didn’t know then was that beating Pascal was far from an easy task and that in winning at all Froch had done even better than we may have given him credit for at the time.
But, Before we Continue our Story; Some Questions about Carl Froch
In April of 2009, Froch met Jermain Taylor for Froch’s WBC Super Middleweight Title. Froch was of course undefeated, but still relatively unknown and thought to be still relatively untested. Taylor, though coming off of a pair of losses to Kelly Pavlik was still a big name and he had appeared to get himself back on track with an easy win over Jeff Lacy in his previous fight in November of 2008.
Taylor came out fast and surged to an early lead. In fact, Taylor was so dominant that he put Froch down for the first and only time in his career in the second round of the fight. This particular fight was so important in terms of how Froch was and is perceived as, for most fans, this was their first look at a fighter that some touted as a future star. On that night, Froch seemed to be far from a budding star. Instead, he was being beaten to the punch consistently by a Jermain Taylor that some already felt was passed his prime. If this was a debut for Froch, the show was not exactly opening to rave reviews. But, Froch wasn’t finished quite yet.
Most fans know the rest of the story of the Taylor-Froch tilt. Froch slowly but steadily came on as the fight progressed. Froch’s surge reached its apex in the twelfth and final round as a flurry of punches finally sent Taylor to the canvas. Ever the game warrior, Taylor rose to his feet and tried to make it out of the round, but Froch had too much momentum at that point and another savage flurry brought a brilliant if not a little frightening end to the bout. Froch trailed on two of the cards by 4 points heading into the final round. Anything less than a knockout and his unblemished record and his title were gone. Froch, to his ultimate credit, delivered. The spectacular ending was something straight out of a Rocky movie, but it didn’t bring an end to the questions about Carl Froch
Taylor had shown a noted tendency to fade in the second half of his fights. Froch had come on, but was it a case of his own strength and aggressiveness wearing Taylor down? Or, did he merely take advantage of Taylor’s conditioning woes? On that night, it was hard to know just where the true answer lay. That night was a pivotal one in the career of Carl Froch. Froch had delivered a spectacular win, but his struggles were very real. And fair or not, it all came against a guy he was supposed to beat. The events of that night all but assured that the win over Pascal was forgotten and that the infrastructure for discrediting the eventual win over Dirrell was set firmly in place.
On Second Thought, maybe that was a Pretty Impressive Win
The doubts that surrounded Froch following his dramatic win over Jermain Taylor became even more pronounced after his disputed win over Andre Dirrell last October. Froch’s victory had not only been somewhat listless, but perhaps worse still, hotly disputed. In fact, Dirrell appeared to have a relatively easy time getting off against Froch and then either moving or holding in order to stifle Froch’s attempts to attack. Froch, for his part, kept up the pressure and Dirrell did appear to wear down as the fight progressed. In the middle rounds, a tiring Dirrell took to holding several times in each and every round as Froch pressured him relentlessly. In a close fight, in which neither man was doing tremendous damage with his punches, it was just the kind of dynamic that can cost you a fight and it seems safe to say that it did cost Dirrell in this one. In any case, some would still say that Dirrell was robbed and that it was a hometown decision for Froch. It would be hard to completely disregard that view. Yet, any impartial view of the fight should lead one to the clear conclusion that, at the very least, it was a close fight that could have been scored for either man; Dirrell didn’t exactly go in and TAKE the title away as perhaps the most famous maxim in boxing commands him to do.
Once again, Froch looked vulnerable. It wasn’t so much that the man was soft as much as the record. After struggling to get passed the talented but unproven Dirrell, it was just hard getting harder and harder to imagine that Froch could remain unbeaten for long against the top competition he was destined to face. Surely, someone would come along and finish what the talented but green Dirrell had started. But, then Dirrell entered the ring for his next fight a few months later and a few things changed.
If Dirrell had shown flashes against Froch, it was sustained brilliance against Arthur Abraham. Dirrell consistently utilized his length and speed to land hard punches against an Abraham that, until that night, had proven to be remarkably difficult to hit cleanly. Dirrell even punctuated his performance by becoming the first man to score a knockdown against Abraham in the fourth round. Abraham did appear to be closing the gap as the fight went in to the last couple of rounds, but a couple of facts simply cannot be argued. Abraham trailed badly on the cards and he had yet to be able to clearly rock Dirrell with any of the single shots he had begun to land.
Similar to the Pascal fight, but even more resounding this time, it seemed that a Froch win had been severely underrated. Dirrell had appeared to box and move so easily against Abraham. In fact, Dirrell was hardly running, he was fighting exquisitely as he landed clean shots against Abraham and then turned him again and again. By the latter stages, Abraham was frustrated by the movement and swollen from the precise punches of Dirrell. Suddenly, one could think back of how well Froch had cut off the ring and forced Dirrell to hold or run. It was easy to recall that Froch had bothered Dirrell with a sneaky jab that threw off his own timing as he set himself to throw. In short, Froch had taken this supremely talented fighter out of his comfort zone and forced him to fight. Dirrell passed opting instead to hold much of the time and it very well may have cost him the decision. The image of Froch borne in the Taylor fight as a talented, but ultimately limited fighter was difficult to shake, but the resume of Carl Froch was bolstered significantly by the subsequent performances of Pascal and Dirrell. As always, it would seem rating a fighter is a work in progress.
“You THINK you know, but you DON’T know, and you NEVER will……”
The reality is, there are many ways to view a given fighter. That is exactly why boxing, perhaps more so than any other sport, seems to produce such heated debate. Every fighter seems to have their proponents who spin results in a way designed to portray them in the most favorable light. While, many of those same fighters have their detractors who spin that same body of work in such a way as to make them seem completely overrated.
Carl Froch is still the only man to beat Jean Pascal. Pascal has looked very good in his recent fights and now he is preparing to step up once again for a shot at the consensus number one at light heavyweight in Chad Dawson. What if he is able to win that fight? How good will the Froch win look then? Yet, Froch went on to struggle mightily with Jermain Taylor who had already lost twice to Kelly Pavlik and would go on to be knocked out by Arthur Abraham. The images of that night raised questions that will follow him the rest of his career. Froch was able to persevere and eventually secure the win in dramatic fashion, but the late comeback couldn’t fully erase the clear struggle of the first several rounds.
Similarly, Froch struggled but gutted out a win over Andre Dirrell. At the time, it looked like more fodder for the “Carl Froch is overrated” campaign, until Dirrell entered the ring and delivered a spectacular performance against the same Arthur Abraham who was thought to be the co-favorite in the Super Six after his destruction of Taylor. Suddenly, Froch’s ability to find a way to win took on a new and decidedly more positive spin. Froch is all over the place offering a veritable smorgasbord of positives and negatives in the ring. As of now however things are looking up, all Froch does is win and, interestingly, so do many of his opponents.
The career of a prize fighter is never set in stone. It is always shifting based on his performances and the performances of those whom he has fought. Ultimately, a boxing career is like a stock market with the perception of that fighter constantly moving up or down. Andre Dirrell, Jean Pascal, and Jermain Taylor are, in essence, stocks in the Froch portfolio. Their performances should and do impact how we view Froch.
But, that is hardly the end of the story. Unfortunately for fight fans, the lack of precision goes beyond the rapidly shifting landscape of who beat who and how they looked doing it. Perhaps Pascal was not really his best at 168. Admittedly, some of his best performances have come since he moved up to the 175 pound limit. How can one know? And, what of the match up of styles? Perhaps Dirrell will forever fight brilliantly against a smaller man like Abraham, but always be uncomfortable against someone of just about equal length such as Froch. None of this means, that Froch can’t fight or that he didn’t do a tremendous thing in winning those fights, but rather that the timing or particular match up may have favored or hindered him in ways we don‘t see right now. Variables impact results. All too often, they are viewed as excuses, but that doesn’t mean that they cease to exist.
And, then there is the last and most difficult variable with which to contend; the fighters are human. Human beings can have off nights, they can be distracted, and they can make mistakes. Conversely, fighters can be particularly sharp on given night or simply particularly focused and ready. Perhaps Jermain Taylor had just such a night against Froch and Froch was still good enough to stop him, who can say for sure?
Of course humans play other sports, style match ups exist in other sports, and mistakes happen in every sport, which all naturally raises the question of just what makes boxing different? Imagine that in football, if a team scored a seventy yard touchdown or longer in the first quarter, the game was over. Such is the brutal and unforgiving world of boxing. In no other sport is a mistake as costly as it is in boxing. Who can say if the performance of a given fighter was really his best on a given night; variable or excuse? And, who can say that a given result is what would have happened every time? Boxing is not a four quarter game with a guarantee of a 60 minute clock; it is not a long regular season where every team plays every other team in a division or league. Boxing is one night; one night with the highest of stakes because it’s sudden death overtime right from the opening bell. One night with no guarantee of another as “next season” in boxing is never promised. More often than not, the better man wins, but one night can leave a lot of questions and a lasting sense of what might have been.
In the end, a fighter will produce a pretty reasonable picture of his abilities in the ring. Most talented fighters manage to have several shots against other talented fighters and the results give some feel for just how good they were. But, the picture is far from perfect. The timing, the match ups, the unseen factors, the six degrees of pugilism, they all shift the picture. The picture is ultimately blurred only to be focused most imperfectly by our own subjectivity. It is the same for every fighter and it never truly ends. How good is Carl Froch? If only it were that simple. It’s not just about him as one has to also figure just how good are his opponents. And, even that is difficult to do because even those appraisals shift based on their performances and those of THEIR opponents. It’s a dizzying task. No wonder most of us just give up and decide what we think and stick with it. After all, it’s easy enough to do, all we have to do is spin the largely ambiguous results to suit our view. Ultimately, the nights that so far define Froch’s career are gone; having disappeared into a clouded mist of varying appraisals of his performance, how he matched up, and human factors that forever complicate the process. All we can know is that he won on those nights. The ample gray area left over simply provides the setting for the endless debate. And, Carl Froch is just one fighter; one fighter who presents just one curious case.