by James Slater – Once-beaten super-middleweight contender Allan Green recently let it be known he was more than ready and willing to travel to the UK to take on reigning WBC 168-pound king Carl Froch in his home town. 29-year-old Green, currently 28-1(20) went further than demanding the fight; he promised he would KO “The Cobra” and take his title.
However, talking a good fight isn’t always enough for a contender to get the opportunity he craves, and it looks like this will be the case with Green. Speaking to This Is Nottingham.com, Froch said he is in no way interested in a fight with Green, simply because Green is not a big enough name or draw..
Wanting very much to engage in nothing but big fights, Froch has made it clear he will not be attempting to make Green pay for his trash talk.
“He certainly talks a good ‘un [fight],” Froch said of Green. “But if he thinks he can come over to Nottingham and knock me out in six rounds, he’s mental. He’s just looking to put food on his plate. But it doesn’t work like that. Why should I give him a shot? No one gave me a chance, did they? I had to fight an eliminator with Jean Pascal, who has shown just how tough he is by winning the world light-heavyweight title.”
Froch, who had spoken of fights against top names such as Lucian Bute, Bernard Hopkins and Kelly Pavlik taking place in his future (and hopefully one or more of these fights will still take place), is not interested in Green – not until Green becomes his official number-one contender, anyway – and is now looking at maybe facing the unbeaten Andre Dirrell in his second defence.
“I have mandatory obligations and I also want to unify the division,” Froch said. “I wanted [Lucian] Bute (the IBF champ) because I was confident I could beat him. But he showed he didn’t fancy the job by pricing himself out of the fight. He would have earned a million from fighting me – much more than he will get for a rematch with Librado Andrade. But now I’ll be happy to give [Andre] Dirrell a whupping instead.”
And while a Froch-Bute fight would have been far more interesting and meaningful than Froch-Dirrell, this new fight is at least a match that pits unbeaten fighters going at it. 26-year-old Dirrell, known as “The Matrix” is, like Bute, a southpaw. Maybe Froch had started getting ready to face a lefty in his next fight. At 18-0(13) Dirrell figures to be a very live challenger and the prospective clash may attract a pretty big audience.
As for Green – who looked good destroying Carlos De Leon Junior inside 2-rounds on the under-card of Froch’s astonishing comeback win over Jermain Taylor – it seems he will have to work his way to becoming the WBC super-middleweight number-one contender if he’s to get his date with Froch.