Falling in love with Carl Froch
Prizefighting now draws near to completing its most innovative concept in ages. Showtime’s Super Six World Boxing Classic is days from matching its finalists. It is a tournament that has fully altered the professional paths of its every participant, including the network that hatched it. Whatever pundits opine of its anfractuous path, the Super Six has satisfied the praise it initially garnered.
Last week Englishman Carl Froch, whose career might well be the one most dramatically altered, by tournament’s end, captured what has made the Super Six different and essential:
“People are seeing fights that would not have been made.”
Has any sport been undone more completely by the events it didn’t make than boxing?
Saturday at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, Froch will make a fight with Jamaican Glen Johnson to determine who faces Andre Ward in the Super Six final. Johnson, a late sub who earned his place by stretching Allan Green, an unfortunate sub, in November, will face one of the tournament’s original super middleweights. Froch is in the semi-final by virtue of his shutout of Arthur Abraham in November and his aesthetically displeasing points victory over Andre Dirrell in 2009.
The latter was a victory over an opponent Froch dismissed on a Thursday conference call thusly: “I’ve done more damage training myself than Andre Dirrell did.” Dirrell is the fighter whose career will have suffered the most from this tournament. A fighter who was put in the tournament because of talent, not accomplishments, Dirrell is now in a small cadre of fighters for whom knowledgeable fans feel actual contempt.
Of the tournament’s initial participants, Jermain Taylor was retired by the tournament, Kessler was knocked out of the tournament by Ward and Froch, and Abraham was exposed as a one-dimensional strongman. But Dirrell is the only person to whom a tincture of fraud adheres.
Nothing fraudulent adheres to either of Saturday’s men. They both make honest fights. Despite the integrity of his attack, though, Johnson is somehow less knowable than Froch. Johnson is mysterious more than complicated. Froch is no mystery at all and only complicated as a question to him is dumb.
“Glen Johnson is not the sort of guy you knock out,” Froch explained Thursday, when asked if he’d be looking for a knockout. “At the top level, to go in there looking for the knockout is a little naïve or stupid.”
To ask a top-level fighter such a question, Froch implied, is a little naïve or stupid.
There is an authority in Froch’s words that comes with his British accent. Americans, whether we realize it or not, and perhaps especially when we don’t, infer great authority from British diction and word choice. Froch makes proclamations to us more than he answers our inquiries.
He is not prepared for a match; he is “ready to do the business Saturday week.” He does not underestimate his opponent, but rather says “without being cheeky at all towards Glen Johnson, he can’t beat me.”
Johnson’s English, a searching choice of words seasoned by Patois, is hesitant. Courtesy wins its highest premium. Johnson calls himself “Gentleman”; Froch calls himself “Cobra”; both men’s alter egos come through in their speech.
What also comes through, what is most important to Saturday’s fight, is a collection of qualities Froch and Johnson share: Ruggedness and politeness.
Both men understand that boxing is the one combat sport that requires an opponent’s assault. There is no championship fighter with defense so complete he will not be beaten upon by his every challenger. Thirty-six minutes across from a professional puncher is a brutal test. Froch and Johnson appreciate this and take greater umbrage with an opponent who will not punch than one who tries to separate them from consciousness.
Johnson has fought all round the world, often as a b-side, and been jobbed in numerous decisions on foreign soil. Still, he insults no opponent. Froch derides only Dirrell – the one man who didn’t hit him.
Neither man considers deriding the other. That is how you know their fight will be a fine one.
The ability to see what inverse proportionality ever exists between prefight venom and sanctioned violence is what separates aficionado from casual fan. The champions who are politest to their opponents are those that impart the greatest cruelty. They are the men who understand this question: Why get angry when you’re going to fight anyway?
The aficionado is attracted by the orderly attack to which championship prizefighters subject one another. The casual fan, meanwhile, gets giddy over buffoonery and trash-talk. The aficionado comes to boxing from his own time in gyms or other contact sports. The casual fan came on boxing the day he couldn’t find professional wrestling to watch. One demands character; the other demands characters. Froch and Johnson promise character. There is no chance either will feign injury or shrink from conflict. Johnson will come forward and hope to find a spot on Froch’s chest to rest his forehead while he does the man bodily harm. And Froch will target Johnson’s low, charging head and try to dissuade the Jamaican forcefully as possible. Neither man expects the other to break. Each man, though, would be euphoric at leaving the other broken.
“I am fresh, fit, strong, powerful,” said Froch, Thursday. “I’ll be honest, I wish this one was 15 rounds.”
No man asks for 15 rounds with Glen Johnson. Froch might well get what he desires and not know what to do with it. Something tells you, though, that Froch wants exactly what he requests.
Those who appreciate symmetry can’t help but cheer for Froch to advance to the finals against Ward; the last two men standing of the original six, as it were. But no aficionado ever cheered against Johnson.
I’ll take Froch, UD-12, then, while cheering for both men.
Bart Barry can be reached at [email protected]