By Jake Donovan
The good news for boxing fans anxious to see Carl Froch continue his career is that he is not yet ready to retire from the sport. The bad news: his lengthy ring absence will continue a few months longer.
An elbow injury cited during his return to training has forced the unified super middleweight titlist to delay his plans for a springtime fight. The hot and heavy rumors from the other side of the Atlantic called for the Brit to face former middleweight titlist Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., a fight Team Froch was ready to firm up as early as this week.
“I’m disappointed to have to let this opportunity go but at this stage in my career I have to make every fight count,” said Froch in a statement from the press office of his promoter, Matchroom Boxing. “I will get some treatment and then we will look to make this fight or another big fight in the early summer.”
Froch has been out of the ring since his knockout win over George Groves in their rematch last May, a bout that drew nearly 80,000 fans to London's Wembley Stadium.
At age 37, Froch (33-2, 24KOs) has reached a point in his incredible career where it's presumably big fights or bust. That logic has prompted his handlers to seek other opportunities in lieu of an obligated mandatory title defense versus countryman James 'Chunky' DeGale.
A showdown with Chavez Jr. was to be the cure-all to that problem, but is no longer a possibility for the targeted date of March 28 in Las Vegas.
“We have been deep in negotiations for some time and we were almost ready to go,” insisted promoter Eddie Hearn in a statement. “Carl has gone into fights before not 100 percent fit and paid the price and he has made the right decision to hang fire.”
The injury comes at an opportune time, since a Chavez Jr. fight—at least one slated for March 28 in Las Vegas—was a non-starter for a number of reasons.
The night already has two separate shows booked in Sin City. One show is a co-promotion venture between Goossen Promotions and Warriors Boxing, to be held at the MGM Grand Ballroom. The 6,000-seat ballroom on the MGM Grand Property is not to be confused with the MGM Grand Garden Arena which hosted Deontay Wilder's heavyweight title win over Bermane Stiverne over the weekend, as well as the preferred Vegas location for Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao.
Given the promoters of record and the venue, the date is likely reserved for a show on NBC Sports Network, as part of Al Haymon's newly-launched "Premiere Boxing Champions" series.
The other show in town on that evening is a Big Knockout Boxing (BKG Global) show down the strip at Mandalay Bay. Their debut event last summer saw Gabriel Rosado score a knockout win over Bryan Vera in a sport that whose production—in a dumbed-down explanation—is a hybrid version of boxing and MMA
Another lingering issue is Chavez Jr. not being ranked by either the World Boxing Association (WBA) or the International Boxing Federation (IBF). While the WBA has been known to get creative with its titles and rules, the IBF does not make it a habit to randomly sanction fights outside of its immediate rules unless meeting all exceptions criteria.
One criteria point would be for the champion and his team to file an exemption for a fight with anyone other than his mandatory challenger. If plans were firmly in place for a Chavez showdown in the spring, then that hurdle had not yet been approached, much less cleared.
The IBF office confirmed this step had not yet taken place, nor was there any guarantee it would be approved. “Not yet,” was the simple response from IBF spokesperson Jeanette Salazar. "His mandatory is DeGale. He can request an exception but it does not mean it will be granted.”
Also looming overhead is Chavez Jr.'s legal status with promoter Top Rank. The two sides remain embroiled in a legal dispute over the terms of the existing promotional contract. Chavez Jr. insists he is a free agent; Top Rank suggests otherwise, and also with no plans to allow him to fight until the matter is fully resolved.
For now, it's back to the drawing board for Froch and his team until the fighter is fully healed.
“We will have a meeting early next week and plan out 2015,” Hearn said of shaping up the rest of Froch's remaining in-ring career. “I’m confident we will see him back in the ring this summer.”
Hopefully by then, greater clarity will be provided for a fight that—regardless of injury—was never going to happen this spring.
Jake Donovan is the Managing Editor of BoxingScene.com, as well as a member of Transnational Boxing Ratings Board and the Boxing Writers Association of America. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox
