“Well, it’s a good question,” says Carl Froch.
Froch has been asked whether his antagonistic online persona and the man behind the Froch on Fighting YouTube channel is the real Froch.
“I think it’s Carl Froch, a.k.a. The Cobra,” he says, referring to his fighting nickname. “And, I think my channel is very much The Cobra. Because that’s the ex-fighter. That’s the guy with a bit of an ego. That’s the guy that commands respect. The ego’s not there, really. Because, I’m not really arsed. I get to turn so much [media and TV opportunities] stuff down. The stuff I turn down, people say, ‘Why don't you do that?’ ‘Why don’t you do Dancing on Ice?’ ‘Why don’t you do that TV show?’”
Froch says he was tempted by reality TV show I’m a Celebrity, because his children watch it. He declined, more money was offered, and he declined again.
Froch, always forthright with his opinions and views, added: “I’ve already been cancelled. You couldn’t be cancelled on your own channel. You still do have to be careful.”
But Froch, like many ex-fighters, has done work on fights. He had an immediate post-boxing relationship with Sky Sports, but that ended several years ago.
“It’s quite hard. But, when you enjoy it, you don't mind it,” he said.
“Also, you're quite exposed to a lot of criticism as well, aren't you? And sometimes, with a mainstream broadcaster, you have to kind of go along with their bullshit narrative sometimes. Like, ‘which fighter’s going to win? Which fighter’s going to beat who? We’re backing AJ in this one. We need to really rebuild AJ.’ ‘What if he gets fucking beat, and you can’t rebuild anything? ‘He’s got to win, hasn't he?’ And if you're going to ask me my opinion, who I think wins, I think he's going to get beat by this guy who he's fighting next, who he happens to then lose to. But they don’t want you to say that, because that might not sell pay-per-view as much. So, my argument would be, ‘Well, that might sell pay-per-view more if I say he’s going to get beat, because people might tune in to watch him get beat. Why have we got to go along with your narrative?’
“I think a lot of times, because they’re worried about, one, getting cancelled, two, not being invited back. Broadcasters, most of them are on ad hoc contracts. So, if you’re a freelance broadcaster, like a pundit, you want to play the game. Like, do what you’re told. Maybe that’s why I don’t get asked anymore.”
“’Put the fucking, hey, put the badge on. Put a certain badge on.’
‘I don’t want to wear the badge.’
‘Wear the badge.’
‘No, I don't want to wear the badge.’
‘Wear the badge.’
‘I'm not wearing a fucking badge.’
“And you don't get picked to work anymore.”
The irony is that when Froch fought, he went under the radar of mainstream broadcasters for so long and some of his biggest bouts were on comparatively minor platforms.
With hindsight, maybe this more divisive figure would have been bigger business.
“Possibly, yeah,” he considers. “I think I was still learning, and I was so serious and so intense in my fighting, that the play acting and the, sort of, the role play, as in just being a bit more out there with the public, that kind of wasn't on my agenda.
“Like, when I give [Joe] Calzaghe a bit of stick, that was all Mick Hennessy saying ‘say this and say that,’ and I was a bit, like, a bit Nassim Hamed confident and a bit arrogant, but that was a bit of… I felt uncomfortable. All I wanted to do was train, work hard, do what [trainer] Rob McCacken told me to do, and win the fight. I’ve got to win the fight. That’s the main thing, win the fight. Forget selling it, forget being a public figure. Now I’m not boxing. I do look back and think, ‘oh, if I'd have been how I am now, a little bit more confident, a little bit more leery and more out there, maybe that would have been better for me.’ Imagine I got more on it. But I don't think I'd have been the same fighter. Because I was fighting inside, and that was me in the ring. Outside the ring and in the ring, yeah. And if all of a sudden, I'd be this flamboyant, out-there character, more extrovert, more in your face and more outspoken, maybe that would have affected my performance. Everything I was in the ring was raw and true. And you've got to be true in boxing, and the training and that. So it would have been hard for me to try and do what I’m doing now. And I’m not saying on my channel now, the best channel in the business, Froch on Fighting, I’m not saying that it’s not me, because it is. But it's self-awareness. It's me knowing who I am.”
Froch, now 48, has changed in 10 years. He matured into fatherhood and by his own admission has “become more civilised.”
But, he added: “I can have a bit of a crack now, and I'm not so serious. And I let people in a little bit more. But I've got my guard up. And on my channel, I'm able to give my opinion. Because I wanted to give my opinion more when I worked for broadcasters. And I won't mention any particular broadcaster. I’m loving doing my own channel now and being myself. And I’ve grown a little bit more in confidence. I mean, I’ve always been a confident guy. I’m probably not more confident now. I'm just less serious. But when I was boxing, I was a fucking serious operator. I was in the ring, blood, sweat and tears. If I want to say I’m going to fucking try and kill you, I'm going to try and kill you. Do you know what I mean? And I got fined for saying that once for the [Mikkel] Kessler fight. But it’s a metaphor. I don’t want to kill anybody. But I’m prepared to die in the ring. You know what I mean? You’d better nail me to that canvas or I’m going to stand up.”
Froch reckons his first world title victory over Jean Pascal most-defined his career because of the dramatic ebb and flow. It earned him the WBC 168lbs title, and that was the belt he’d always coveted.
“That was held by the best,” he said. “There's Matt Tyson, Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield, Joe Louis. You look at these fighters and you say, ‘Get my face on that belt.’ That's all I ever wanted. So that fight with Pascal, I wasn't a champion. I didn't know if I could be a champion. And I went out in round one and I just tried to fucking win from round one by just putting it all on the line… Getting hit with shots, to land shots, fitness, that showed everything I had. A little bit of skill and technical ability when I needed to because I got caught in round eight and I was blinded in one eye. When the blood was in the eye, I could only see out of one eye and then the distance becomes hard. So I had to get behind my jab and try and just be a bit more cute.”
There were plenty of big Froch nights; Kessler in Denmark and London, Arthur Abraham in Helsinki, Lucian Bute in Nottingham.
“Bute was an angry me,” said Froch.
“It's not really me because I was walking into shots with Bute. If you watch it back, I got fucking hit. Nothing would have stopped me because it’s a mindset. So that wasn’t me-me. “That was an angry me after the [Andre] Ward loss. ‘I've got something to prove here.’ So that’s a part of me. But the Pascal fight was everything I’d worked for, everything I’d worked towards. The fitness, the desire, the belief… [I was] quite raw and naive, but still, I'm going to go for this.”
Unlike so many fighters who have struggled in retirement, Froch has not. He knows that, after the dramatic one-punch KO finish of George Groves in Wembley Stadium, there would be no sweeter note to go out on.
“I will be open and I'll answer you honestly and no,” he said, asked if he’d struggled when he walked away.
“I boxed Kessler on pay-per-view on Sky. I’d already made decent money in the Super 6, couple of mil, give or take, because it was about five, six million dollar tournament. Got to the final, got paid. And then I had Bute. Not mega money, I could have earned four times his money. I got paid 250 grand for that fight; I could have got a million quid for going to Canada. Speculate to accumulate, got him here. Got a Kessler rematch. After that was Yusaf Mack, which is a bit of a gimme, six, seven hundred bags at the end of that. And then I got Kessler on pay-per-view on Sky. Couple or three mil. Do you know what I mean? It's like, I'm fucking done now. Right, I've got my house, I've got my property portfolio, I've got my kids, I've got my missus. Right, thank you God, I'm fucking blessed.
“And then you've got Groves coming out of the woodwork and I'm thinking, ‘Fuck him, I can't be arsed fighting this ginger prick.’ Not in a horrible way, but it's like, I've dropped him in sparring, I can't be bothered with him. I had that first fight with him, which was pay-per-view on Sky, and it was a fucking proper scrap, where I nearly got done.
“So I'm like, ‘Fuck me, can I go home now and just stay home and not bother fighting ever again?’ And then we got the rematch. Didn’t really wanna fight again. I had to fight again, but didn't really wanna. But to get that rematch at Wembley Stadium in front of all them people, and then to go out the way I did and get paid all that fucking money, do you know what I mean? It was like, I'm fucking done now. The camp for that fight was so hard, because I stayed away from home. My daughter Natalia was only like two, and she was born just before the Kessler fight, and I just wanted to fucking go home and stay at home with the missus and kids, and I'd got enough money in the bank, and I'd had enough.”
But the career full-stop against Groves was a crowning moment, the mic drop when the 33-2 (24 KOs) Cobra hung up his gloves… and picked up his own microphone.
Hardly a month goes by without Froch being linked to fighting someone, from Darren Till to Jake Paul.
“Do I like the speculation?” he pondered. “Do I like all the hype and that, I suppose? I don't dislike it. Alright, it’s good fun But am I arsed about fighting again? No.”
Is he 100 per cent out?
“I don’t think you’d ever say 100 per cent out. Because if I got the right offer to fight the right dance partner, I would probably take it. You know what I mean? It’d have to be the right fighter and it’d have to be the right money.”
Because Froch had surgery to straighten his nose when he left the sport.
“The nose is done, mate. The old nose was absurd, wasn't it? I used it as a battering ram,” he joked.
And he’s busy now, splitting opinions regularly with Froch on Fighting, and he knows the publicity and speculation of a return only helps the channel.
“Well, I’ve got my channel, haven’t I? Yeah. And, I like to think, with my channel, it’s good to create publicity. But, I honestly don’t go out there to create anything. Because you end up, it’s short-lived, isn't it? Giving people stick and trying to create a story and trying to create a narrative. I was lucky in the beginning, because we had Jake Paul. We had Tyson Fury’s dad playing up. There’s been a few people I’ve been able to get stuck into but I’ve turned into a serious boxing channel now. And, I enjoy it more now, doing my channel than what I did when I worked for Sky as a pundit. I could never be arsed to read the notes. And, I can't be arsed to just fucking read the notes and then be on Sky for three minutes all night.
“You get a little bit before [a fight], a little bit after the fight. Sometimes, you do a bit of comms. You’re there for 10 hours and you might get three minutes of air time,” he explained.
Froch was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2023. He had a 12-year career and went 33-2 (24 KOs), with an avenged defeat to Mikkel Kessler and a loss to Andre Ward. His last fight was 11 years ago, the knockout of George Groves inside Wembley Stadium in front of 80,000 fans.
