By Michael Collins: IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch’s promoter Eddie Hearn is ecstatic about Froch’s win over IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute last Saturday night, and Hearn believes that Froch has got the talent to unify all of the belts before he hangs up his gloves at some point in the future.
Hearn said to Sky Sports Ringside “I really think Carl can unify the division. When you look at the other belts now, you have [Brian] Magee fighting for the WBA belt. You’ve got [Robert] Stieglitz , the WBO champion, and with [Andre] Ward moving up, the WBC is going to free up as well. I think there’s really a chance.”
Hearn may have missed it but Ward isn’t moving up in weight right now. He’s going to be facing WBC light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson at 168lbs, so he’s not going anywhere. As long as Ward is around, Froch isn’t going to be unifying all the belts. He may pick off one or two of the other titles against the weaker paper champions but he’s not going to get whatever belt that Ward is holding. Hopefully, Hearn is aware of Froch’s limitations because we saw pretty clearly that he didn’t have the talent to beat Ward in their fight last December.
Froch could have other problems on his hands if he ever defends his title against Adonis Stevenson or the Dirrell brothers. Stevenson, a southpaw, punches hard and with speed, and he’d give Froch a lot of problems. And the Dirrell brothers both have speed and power. Froch looked bad in winning a controversial 12 round split decision over a younger Andre Dirrell in 2009 in Nottingham. Froch’s hometown advantage meant little in that fight other than perhaps him getting the decision in the end. In that respect, it probably saved him the fight, but as far as the action went, Froch looked out of his league in that fight. I can’t see anything changing now that he’s older.
I think Hearn needs to recognize that Froch beat an unproven, vulnerable fighter in Lucian Bute, and the win says more about Bute than it does about Froch. We’ve already see Froch get beat by Mikkel Kessler and Ward, and struggle badly against Dirrell and Jermain Taylor. Nothing has changed since then as far as I can tell. The only that changed was that Froch fought a highly hyped fighter with Bute and he showed that Bute isn’t what a lot of people originally thought he was.