By Keith Idec
If Bernard Hopkins wants to fight Carl Froch, the IBF light heavyweight champion will need to come down to a catch weight to make it happen.
Froch expressed interest in boxing Hopkins on a conference call Wednesday to discuss his super middleweight championship rematch against Mikkel Kessler on May 25 in London. The British star also made it perfectly clear that he has no intention of moving all the way up to 175 pounds for a shot at the 48-year-old legend.
“I’ve heard that,” Froch said, referencing Hopkins publicly talking about fighting him. “I look up to Bernard Hopkins. I think he’s a great ambassador for the sport. I think he’s been around too long, but he’s still doing it, so you can’t knock him for it. And one day, in the future, it would be an honor to fight somebody like that. I feel I know how to beat him, but it’s one step at a time.
“But I’ll tell you now, I’m not a light heavyweight, so he’s going to have to come down to a catch weight. I don’t expect him to come down to super middle, but don’t expect me to do light heavyweight.”
The 35-year-old Froch (30-2, 22 KOs) and the 34-year-old Kessler (46-2, 35 KOs) will square off in an HBO “World Championship Boxing” main event May 25 from a sold-out O2 Arena. Hopkins (53-6-2, 32 KOs, 2 NC) is scheduled to make a mandatory defense of his IBF 175-pound crown against Germany’s Karo Murat (25-1-1, 15 KOs) on July 13 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
