By Cliff Rold

There had been controversies, highlight reel knockouts, and upsets so far in the “Super Six” Super Middleweight tournament.  What there had not been so far was a truly outstanding fight.

Check that off the list.

In a rousing affair that saw both men hurt, cut, and pushed to their limits, 31-year old Mikkel Kessler (43-2, 32 KO) of Copenhagen, Denmark, put together a career saving victory and handed 32-year old Carl Froch (26-1, 20 KO) of Nottingham, England his first defeat by unanimous decision at the MCH Messecenter Herning in Herning, Denmark on Saturday night.  With the win, Kessler claimed the WBC belt at 168 lbs. for the second time one fight after losing the WBA strap. 

Kessler briefly unified both the WBA and WBC titles between 2006 and 2007 before losing a unification contest with future Hall of Famer Joe Calzaghe.  Kessler entered the ring against Froch with questions about whether he could show such form again, particularly after suffering a rough loss versus 2004 U.S. Olympic Light Heavyweight Gold Medalist Andre Ward to open the tournament.  He answered for twelve long rounds in front of his partisan faithful.

Both men weighed in just a shade below the division limit, Kessler at 167 and Froch at 167 ¼ lbs. 

At the start, Kessler struck first with a light left jab and both men took turns on the stick before Froch opened and missed with a looping right.  He wouldn’t miss near the minute mark with a sweeping left and Kessler struggled to land clean with harshly intended power shots as the opening frame progressed.  Kessler began the second round with more focus, doubling the jab and whipping straight lefts to the body.  Froch responded while circling with jabs of his own, letting Kessler stalk while looking for counters, but ate leather to the ribs whenever Kessler went downstairs.

Round three began as the previous two had, Kessler jabbing but the Dane was increasingly aggressive as the round wore on.  Froch ripped in with a flush right at the midway point but Kessler showed no affect, still pressing and beating a steady volume of blows.  Down the stretch, both men took their turns at each other with wild power shots that looked better than they were.

It was in the middle of the fourth that Froch struck again with the right hand, jarring Kessler, but it was a small highlight in a round controlled by the consistency of his foe.  Kessler stayed active behind the jab and matched Froch’s right in the closing seconds with one of his own, appearing to claim possibly three of the first four rounds.

Froch rebounded dramatically in the fifth round, right hands and sneaky left hooks catching Kessler throughout three minutes, forcing him off balance.  A short trip to the canvas appeared at first to be Kessler suffering a knockdown but replays showed three missing blows and tangled feet.   Kessler answered in the sixth, if in less hammering fashion, letting his hands go when Froch backed to the ropes and employing better head movement than he had the round before.  Froch engaged in the final thirty seconds but Kessler kept pace enough to keep the round from being stolen.

Both battlers struggled to land the best of their arsenals for most of round seven but Kessler’s jab landed plenty and a pair of heavy, connecting rights in the closing seconds brought his countrymen to their feet.  The second of them struck Froch to the back of the head as the Brit turned away but a brief attempt at complaint fell on deaf ears.  Kessler maintained his momentum in the eighth, his biggest moment of the bout coming with a minute left in the round.

A right hand wobbled Froch, but the titlist kept his feet and braced as Kessler came forward with both hands and backed him into the corner.  Dodging and weaving, Froch worked his way back to mid-ring, eluding a volley of blows from Kessler but heading to the corner with a cut on his nose.

Fighting with a confidence not seen since prior to his losing battle against Joe Calzaghe in 2007, Kessler stayed pressing, his hands moving, in the ninth and Froch had little answer until the final minute when a couple of rights and a wide left connected.  A cut was opened near the end of the round over the left eye of Kessler but whether it was caused by a punch was unclear.

Only three rounds remained, Kessler seeming to have a commanding lead, and the former champion ripped a left uppercut to the chin of Froch only seconds into the tenth to keep command.  A landing right from Froch brought two Kessler hooks to the body in response, Kessler pawing between exchanges at the cut.  In the final minute, both men let loose with winging blows, Kessler having the last word with a right near the corner.

With a bruising raised under his right eye, Kessler stepped into the final six minutes and found a Froch not ready to part with his belt or undefeated mark.  After a measured first minute, both men went to work with bombs, Froch shaking Kessler with a right at the middle point of the round and Kessler landing a snappy left hook in return.  Closing in on a minute left, Kessler crashed home to the face of Froch with a right hand and a partly landed left hook near the ropes, Froch stepping back and missing with a nasty right hand.  They traded rabbit punches in a short clinch, quickly separated by referee Michael Griffin and then resuming the action.

Kessler missed a left and right, Froch covering and taking a step back.  A right hand was blocked by the guard of Kessler but it created an opening for a Froch left uppercut and right hand right behind it.  Kessler clinched, perhaps buzzed, and his offense was made up of token blows as Froch came on down the stretch of a fantastic round.

A double jab and right hand started the final round for Kessler, Froch missing his first few powerful attempts.  Another double jab and right landed before a minute was gone, shortly followed with a clipping left hook.  A right hand and left hook laced Froch in the middle of the round as the crowd built to a fever behind Kessler.  Froch missed with two rights, then another, but then found a series of left hooks. 

With a minute to go it was bedlam, Kessler striking with the right hand and firing, if mostly missing, while Froch was to the ropes.  A Froch right hand caught Kessler and suddenly it was Froch coming forward, an exhausted Kessler grabbing hold of Froch after tasting a slinging left.  With ten second to go, Kessler launched a final assault, landing lefts and rights thrown with what he had left in the tank, both warriors smiling at each other as the final bell rang.

Celebrating in the corner well before the cards were read, there could be no surprise when the scores came in 117-111, 116-112, and 115-113 for Kessler. 

Having answered questions about his ability to fight back when pushed after losses to Calzaghe and to Ward where he seemed stuck in single gear, Kessler spoke to the criticisms.  “In the Ward fight…it wasn’t my night then.  (Ward) fought a great fight but I know I’m better.  I had a lot of experts saying I couldn’t win over Froch.  I was finished.  My career was finished.  So it’s nice to get my old belt back and show them that I’m still the champ and I’m ready to fight Ward again.”

Asked about his decision to come forward for most of the fight, Kessler stated, “(Froch) isn’t so good fighting backwards.  He’s a physical, strong fighter.  In the style of the fight, I hurt him sometimes with a straight right hand to the body and that took a lot of breath from him…so I just kept on doing it and then he fought my fight instead of I’m fighting his fight.”

Sporting a wide gash over his left eye, Kessler spoke to suffering bad cuts in both rounds of the tournament.  “I’ve got to be careful.  I don’t know when (the cut) came.  I think it was off a left hand.  I have to be careful of the cuts.  I have to move my head some more.”  Looking ahead to his final preliminary tournament contest, Kessler addressed the threat to come from Allan Green (29-1, 20 KO).  “I haven’t really watched so much of him but he’s a great fighter.  So I’m looking forward to a great fight with Allan Green.”

Froch, having suffered his first defeat, felt he shouldn’t have.  “I thought I did enough, I got to be honest.  I thought I had him hurt, well I did have him hurt, two or three times.  I think it was three times I had him badly hurt.  You know, it’s my own fault.  If I’d have sustained the attack, and put it on him more, instead of giving him probably a little too much respect…but he deserves respect.  He’s a good fighter.  If I’d have put it on him more, and sustained the attack, I’d have definitely gotten him out of there and that’s something nobody else has ever done.”

Pausing, Froch then bluntly added, “Well, I didn’t do it so I can’t say that I was gonna’ do it but I feel I could have got him out of there.  He was hurt.  He was wobbled.  I just didn’t sustain it.”  Despite the assessment, Froch clearly still thought he deserved what would have been his 27th victory.  “It was very close.  I don’t want to take anything away from Mikkel Kessler but if that had been in Nottingham, if that had been in my hometown, the decision would have gone the other way same score.  There will be a lot of people out there who say it was a robbery; there will be a lot of people that say he won.  It’s subjective.  Boxing is subjective scoring.  It can go either way depending on how you look at the fight.  If I felt like I’d lost, if I felt like I’d took too many shots, and I felt like I was out of there, I would admit it and say, ‘Look, I thought I lost.’  But to give it 117-111 is just too wide a margin.”     

Froch moves on to former Middleweight titlist Arthur Abraham (31-1, 25 KO).  Abraham will enter after having suffered a disqualification against a well ahead Andre Dirrell (19-1, 13 KO), hitting Dirrell after Dirrell had slipped to the floor.  It will produce the first contest between fighters coming off a loss in the tournament and, providing drama, the winner will be assured a spot in the semi-finals based on current results.  “Abraham is a great fighter.  Very strong and tough.  I feel I’ll have too much for him.  I learned a lot from that fight with Mikkel Kessler.  I know where certain things where the fight went wrong and I know exactly what to do to beat Arthur Abraham.”

“But the tournament tightened up.  What a great tournament this is.  It’s getting great.  Mikkel is still in the tournament.  It was very, very close.  Like I said, I thought I did enough, but that’s boxing.  It’s boxing at the elite level.  Each fighter is going to win, lose, and draw and we’re all still in it.”

With one bout remaining in Group Stage Two of the tournament, Froch couldn’t be more correct.  Ward (21-0, 13 KO) will defend the WBA belt he won from Kessler last year against Green in June and, in terms of points, has a chance to seize the tournament lead with a win.  Green enters as a replacement for Jermain Taylor after Taylor chose to exit the tournament following a knockout loss to Abraham in the first round.   Ward and Dirrell are slated for a showdown of Olympic medal winning teammates (Dirrell won a bronze at Middleweight) later in the year.

With two points for a win and a bonus point for a knockout, the standings currently have Abraham (1-1) still with a tenuous lead at three points.  Ward (1-0), Kessler (1-1), Froch (1-1) and Dirrell (1-1) all have two points. 

Should Green defeat Ward, it’s still everybody’s ball game heading into the final qualifying round.  All eyes turn to June 19th in Oakland, California for Ward-Green to see what new twists and turns await in the “Super Six.”

The broadcast was carried in the U.S. on premium cable outlet Showtime, promoted by Sauerland Events.

Cliff Rold is a member of the Ring Magazine Ratings Advisory Panel and the Boxing Writers Association of America.  He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com