In round 6 of their super middleweight match, Saturday, Englishman Carl “The Cobra” Froch and Dane Mikkel “Viking Warrior” Kessler briefly got separated by the ref after a Kessler blow struck well beneath Froch’s cranberry-satin belt line. Froch shook it out, dangling his right foot off the mat till he was rearranged enough to resume, and then the two men came together and Kessler belly-piped Froch with a 2-3 combo that was Kessler’s best of their match’s first half.
Froch, practiced as any prizefighter at showing an opponent no spiritual weakness while showing sundry technical weaknesses in a uniquely shameless way, tucked his hearth-bottom chin, took the blows, and fought back without spite or regard for personal safety – the way a gentleman is expected to do. London’s aficionados applauded raucously, the scrap continued apace, and Froch had his satisfaction, prevailing in a rematch with Kessler by unanimous decision.
There is something absurd about Carl Froch’s self-belief, and the absurder element of it is its contagiousness, an infectious impulse so potent others catch it and assign Froch many times more effectiveness than his attacks merit, a reflexive thing that confirms itself while denying reason. The affliction of Froch’s self-belief does not noy cautious and naturally suspicious technicians like Andre Ward, a man likely to believe the most potent thing about any opponent for 10 minutes, but someone like Mikkel Kessler, a man with little cause for caution who nevertheless finds his attack bilked, time and again, by the force of Froch’s absurd self-belief and its awkward manifestation – so awkward an attentive spectator must sometimes ask: Where does The Cobra practice such moves?
It’s a proper question because you cannot toss yourself at the handpads the way Froch tosses himself at an opponent, and no one would shadowbox with such raveled feet or twisted torso, and you cannot make a heavybag elusive as Froch can make an opponent; it is as if, in camp, Froch begins swimming at a line of double-end bags, punching, missing, bracing, absorbing, eluding, biting, countering, pivoting, blocking, tasting, and pirouetting, before he arrives at the rusted pipe of their frame, touches it with a spin, then swims home, getting as well as he gives, and ending each lap with an avouching nod. Pity poor Mikkel Kessler, then, for showing any vulnerability to a man capable of such random violence and indefatigable self-belief.
Their second fight, though, was very much closer than one official judge and one unofficial judge had it. Rounds 3, 4 and 5 could probably have gone either way, with two of them perhaps belonging to Kessler. Rounds 9 and 10 were good, even affairs. When five rounds of 12 were that close, there is no reason for one man to win a fight 118-110, unless a judge is scoring crowd noise, and if she is doing that, how much better is she than a decibel meter?
Lost in the cacophony about Froch’s chin was a point open to be made about Kessler’s: He caught the entirety of the fight’s unpredictable punches and the final counter in every exchange, an absurdly confident Froch punctuation mark at the end of every paragraph, and yet Kessler did not buckle as he did in their first match. He got shuffled round the ring, and his head got jammed backwards more than advisable, but he was never in danger of being stopped, and if anyone wintled from a punch, it was Froch in round 11, when the Cobra sprang into a rightcross counter and staggered ropesward immediately after.
Froch-Kessler II was a gentleman’s fight in gentlemanliness’ birthplace, an agreement between two chums to make a hellacious scrap, dirty as it need be, entertain those gathered, and embrace at the close. There was a tender moment when, after hugging the man he verily believed he’d beaten, and while still buzzing from what blows the man sloshed his brain with, Froch held Kessler’s handsome pink face between his black gloves and asked several times if his friend were all right. It was a thing Europeans have to show us how to do; our best Americans take themselves too seriously, and therefore every punch too personally, to fight so hard or show such affection immediately afterwards; and Latin America’s finest, usually Mexicans, keep score of grievances too proficiently and with much too much granularity, in their fetish for vengeance, to hope for a foe’s health while their own remains compromised.
The world does not await a rematch between Andre Ward and Carl Froch, a rematch the victor seems to want more than the vanquished; Froch alluded to Ward’s spoiler style and how incapable it often proves of uplifting observers’ spirits, Ward replied no fighter ever prefers a style than solves his own, and both men were correct. After ignoring the super middleweight division and its deserving champion for years, HBO now appears to have wagered its future on Ward’s charisma, a characteristically wrongheaded bet and typical overcorrection by a network whose commentating crew regularly swings like a tardy pendulum between proofs and disproofs of its prefight narrative, and prizes consensus more than interesting people do.
Ward convincingly defeated Froch 17 1/2 months ago by accumulating a large points lead, conserving strength, and finishing hungrily – but if Ward won the second half of their fight on an unbiased scorecard, it wasn’t by much. Which is a thing that should be said about Froch’s Saturday victory over Kessler. Froch-Kessler III will be more enjoyable for all involved than Ward-Froch II.
Bart Barry can be reached at bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com
