By Mark Vester

To this day, WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch refuses to forgive Joe Calzaghe for never accepting his challenge. Froch called Calzaghe out for years. He fought his way through the ranks, becoming Calzaghe's mandatory, but Joe vacated the title and moved up to light heavyweight to fight Bernard Hopkins. After Froch won the vacant title, he thought a Calzaghe fight was in reach. When Calzaghe announced his retirement a few weeks ago, Froch knew that he would never get a chance to fight his UK rival.

"When he vacated, I lost sleep over that. It had nothing to do with money or the belt. He was renowned as the best super-middleweight in the world and that is what I want to be. I wanted to fight him to prove to people that I could knock him out in style and beat him easily. That is exactly what I think I can do, even still."

Froch wants to build a bigger legacy than that of Calzaghe. He promises to fight every big name and he doesn't care where it happens. On April 25, he travels to America to defend his title against mandatory challenger Jermain Taylor at Foxwoods in Connecticut.

"I think I can be remembered as a better champion than Joe especially with what I am doing by going over to America for my first defence. I'll fight [Kelly] Pavlik if he'll have it and I am happy to fight Mikkel Kessler in Copenhagen if I have to. The IBF champion, Lucien Bute, I would smash to bits in six rounds. He cannot hold a shot.

"David Haye shows a lot of guts and character the way he does things. He says he is going to do it and has a right go. He fought Jean-Marc Mormeck in France. He got a good payday for that but it was a risk. I am from the same sort of breed as David Haye, where I have got belief, self-confidence. There is a fine line between that and stupidity, but we both believe in our abilities. We are big punchers who are prepared to travel to get what we want out of the sport."

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