Froch-Groves agree on rematch on May 31st

By Bill Phanco - 02/13/2014 - Comments

IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch (32-2 23 KO’s) and George Groves (19-1, 15 KO’s) have reached agreement for a rematch that is tentatively scheduled for May 31st at one of the huge outdoor football stadiums in the UK. Froch’s promoter Eddie Hearn wants to place it in a stadium that holds 80,000 and he feels that it’ll be the biggest fight ever in British boxing. Whether that’ll be or not is unknown, but what is known is that the two fighters will be splitting a huge 10 million purse for the fight. Groves’ cut of the purse is anywhere from 15-25 percent.

“The British public are behind this and this was almost the only fight out there for me to reasonably take,” Froch said to Sky Sports. “I’ve given the British public what they wanted for years and years and I won’t stop doing it now.”

Froch and Groves fought last year in November in a fight where the referee Howard John Foster stopped the fight in a controversial fashion in the 9th round with Groves still on his feet and fighting back after having been buzzed by a right hand from Froch. It was controversial because Froch threw a flurry of shots with almost every punch missing.

The referee saw the punches being thrown but he didn’t take into account that Froch was unable to hit anything even with Groves standing point blank range in front of him. Groves was knocked off balance when Froch bumped him hard into the ropes. The referee perhaps thought that Groves fell backwards from a punch, but in fact it was from Froch having bumped him.

One gets the sense that Froch would have taken another fight with the likes of Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. or Gennady Golovkin if he could have gotten either of them in the ring by May. However, neither of those fights were there for Froch at this time, and he would have had to wait a considerable amount of time if he wanted to face Chavez Jr.

Froch will make better money in the rematch with Groves than he would either of those guys, because he would need to give them both a much bigger purse split for them to agree to fight him. With the Groves fight, Froch can get the lion’s share simply because it’s seen as a normal title defense.

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