Carl Froch calls Gennady Golovkin ‘a wet lettuce’

Podcasts

He may be retired, and there might be little boxing news to speak of, but Carl Froch is still out here making headlines and infuriating people on the internet. The former super-middleweight king has his own podcast, Froch on Fighting, and in the latest episode he gave his side of the story as to why a mooted clash with Gennady Golovkin never happened.

โ€œWe were in talks with his manager. They were trying to get me down to 166lbs,โ€ he said. โ€œThat donโ€™t sound like much weight, 2lbs below the 12 stone [super-middleweight] limit. I was a machine at 12 stone.

โ€œI could not have lost another 2lbs and performed. They were just trying to drag me down that bit further.โ€

Froch – as only he can – also gave his view on how a fight with Golovkin wouldโ€™ve gone.

โ€œIn my opinion Iโ€™d beat him up because Iโ€™m too big and too strong for him. I might be wrong, weโ€™ll never know, but I would back myself to beat him,โ€ he said.

โ€œI couldโ€™ve got my nose broke, I couldโ€™ve got my eye cut and been blinded in one eye, I couldโ€™ve even got ironed out.

โ€œI never think Iโ€™d be knocked out because Iโ€™ve been hit with some big, big shots in my career and Iโ€™ve felt them, but they never bothered me that much. Iโ€™ve never been flattened like Amir Khan, have I?โ€

gennady golovkin
Carl Froch thinks he would have beaten Gennady Golovkin Tom Hogan/K2

My favourite part of this segment of his show was Froch describing the time he shook Golovkinโ€™s hand as being โ€œlike shaking the hand of a wet lettuce.โ€ Froch undoubtedly believes heโ€™d have beaten Golovkin, but heโ€™s also a provocateur with a very dry sense of humour, and some of what he says is done so with his tongue firmly in his cheek. Regardless, this is the sort of content we need in such trying times; Carl Froch calling Gennady Golovkin a wet lettuce.

Websites

Though itโ€™s becoming increasingly hard to tell what the future holds for boxing, it looks as though weโ€™re going to get a third fight between Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin. The Athletic first reported the news that a trilogy fight has allegedly been signed, providing the pair win in interm fights with Billy Joe Saunders and Kamil Szeremeta respectively.

Interestingly, ESPN reported that Caneloโ€™s agreement to fight Saunders came with the stipulation that he must also sign to fight Golovkin after, suggesting DAZN are forcing the issue to get a serious return on their $365 million investment into the Mexican star.

According to ESPN, Canelo-Golovkin 3 was initially slated for September of this year, but the coronavirus pandemic obviously throws that into doubt. While their rivalry has lost some of its appeal, itโ€™s still a great fight – though Caneloโ€™s hurdle to get there is significantly higher than Golovkinโ€™s.

By all accounts the deal was a nightmare to get done, but if broadcast execs can continue to throw their weight around to get the top fights made, we could see some positive growth.

Floyd Mayweatherโ€™s rumoured return to the ring will not take place this year, according to TMZ. After both Josie Harris – Floydโ€™s ex-partner and mother to three of his children – and his uncle Roger passed away in the space of a week, Mayweather is apparently putting the brakes on any fighting plans.

That is, obviously, completely understandable, though Iโ€™d still rather see Mayweather stick to retirement and waltz into the Hall of Fame.

Two fighters have come out and announced their next fight will be postponed due to the coronavirus, though one appears to have jumped the gun. Speaking to BTV in his native Bulgaria, Kubrat Pulev insisted his June 20 meeting with unified heavyweight champ Anthony Joshua will be postponed by at least a few months, however his manager then had to clear things up by telling Boxing Scene that scenario is still just a possibility, and that the June 20 date remains in place.

Meanwhile, Teofimo Lopez told the same site that his mooted fight with Vasyl Lomachenko will not take place on May 30 as originally intended. The fight still hasnโ€™t been formally announced, though seems a sure bet for some point this year, provided shows can take place again. Itโ€™s a fascinating fight, and one we hopefully see sooner rather than later.

Broadcasts

Thereโ€™s obviously no live boxing going on at the moment, nor for the foreseeable future, so to get our fix we fans are having to go back and watch past fights in order to escape the reality of society as we know it crumbling around us.

While thereโ€™s plenty of this content on YouTube and broadcastersโ€™ on demand services, one place not everyone will know about is KOTV. Starting out in 2001, KOTV featured on terrestrial television, first on ITV2 before moving to Channel 4, where it remained in a weekly slot for 15 years.

This partnership ended in 2018 and so KOTV has now moved online – and is still free. KOTV produce a weekly magazine show, โ€˜KOTV Boxing Weeklyโ€™, in which they recap all the latest news and fights in the sport. Theyโ€™ve also got KOTV Classics, which features historic fights from their vast archive, and theyโ€™re now looking to broadcast smaller shows in the UK, either live or on delay.

Whatever the case, thereโ€™s a trove of free boxing content available for fans at kotvboxing.tv. The outfit has decades of experience in the game, plus if KOTV can provide a platform for smaller shows once the sport is up and running again, thatโ€™s yet another avenue for fans to get access to fights that otherwise wouldnโ€™t be seen outside the venues theyโ€™re in. With other small hall shows now being streamed on YouTube at times, we could be entering a period of unprecedented availability when it comes to live boxing in the UK.

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