Carl Froch got some pretty bad news with the WBA wanting negotiations between himself and Andre Ward. Froch has already come out and said that fights against Ward, Hopkins and DeGale simply did not interest him and he would likely retire rather than face any of those names. Having beaten Mikkel Kessler in their rematch however, Ward is the only unavenged loss sitting on the Brits resume.
Ward and Froch now have the month of March to negotiate this bout before it will go to purse bids. According to the statement released by the WBA, they would have to organise the fight somewhere in the next 120 days. To me right now, I just do not see this happening.
Froch decided to vacate his IBF strap rather than face James DeGale and it looks to me at this point as though a similar situation is going to occur here. When discussing the fight even before this order was made, Froch said he didn’t want to end his career by chasing a man around the ring for twelve rounds before losing by decision. He would rather go out in a war to be remembered with someone like Julio Cesar Chavez Jr who is known for his punch and his chin.
I think there is the motive there that Chavez is a much more winnable fight than Ward, but it is also a much bigger fight than DeGale, making a happy medium in terms of public interest as well as difficulty for Froch. The other thing to discuss would be if the Ward-Froch 2 fight did come about, how would it play out? If you look at the first fight Froch was dominated for the first 8 rounds before staging a mini-comeback in the last third of the fight. Although it was too little to late in my eyes and the eyes of the judges, I think the scorecard turned in by John Keane was far too wide.
Since that fight Froch has won the IBF title when he came back and stopped the undefeated favourite Lucian Bute. Bute has not looked the same even for a second since that brutal stoppage and it has clearly affected his confidence and mental strength. Froch then defended that title before rematching Mikkel Kessler and avenging that loss whilst also aquiring the WBA strap. What followed was two stoppages of George Groves. In that same time frame ward has only had two fights, one against a weight drained Chad Dawson who had just struggled with Bernard Hopkins, and a second against the undefeated, but unknown Edwin Rodriguez.
What we have to find out is that how much have these two fighters changed since their meeting back in 2011. Froch has looked pretty unstoppable and Ward has looked invisible. We have seen Froch improve enough to come back and beat Kessler, would he be able to do the same with Ward? It would be a tough one. It is not out of the question however. Because Ward has bested Froch in the past he is strongly favoured to win that bout, and whilst I agree Ward should win it, I think it would be closer than most people think.