With Mikkel Kessler pulling out of the Super Six tournament with an eye injury, Carl Froch and Arthur Abraham’s October 2 fight will now be a Super Six semi-final and WBC title match.
Kessler pulled out last week after announcing his the superior oblique muscle in his left eye had been severely weakened over last year and worsened after his Super Six fights with Andre Ward and Carl Froch. In his last fight against Froch, Kessler won the WBC super-middleweight.
His withdrawal now makes the belt vacant, and Carl Froch and Arthur Abraham will contend for it next month. In addition, Showtime has eliminated the Stage Three portion of the tournament, meaning Froch-Abraham and Ward-Dirrell will be semi-final bouts with the winners facing off to unify the WBA and WBC belts.
“This fight with Abraham will be for the WBC title… and will be a straight semi-final. It’s good news for me,” Froch explained on BBC Radio Nottingham. “There’s me and Abraham left, and we’re fighting. Andre Ward versus Andre Dirrell is the other semi. So in the final, you’ll have a WBC-WBA unification fight. After the final, Kessler’s got a shot at the WBC. Kessler will be what they call the ‘marital’ WBC champion, which means that Abraham and I are fighting for my old title.”
The 33-year-old Froch (26-1, 20 KOs) originally won the vacant WBC title in 2008 by defeating Jean Pascal. He made two successful defenses against Jermain Taylor (KO12) and Andre Dirrell (SD12) before losing the belt to Mikkel Kessler in April. With the Stage Three bracket gone from the Super Six, Froch is aware he is in an elimination, do or die fight with the consensus hardest punching and strongest fighter in the tournament in Arthur Abraham (31-1, 25 KOs).
“It means I’ll be world champion assuming I do the job properly and Kessler would get a shot at challenging for his old belt back because he vacated it,” he acknowledged. “So there’s an undisputed world title fight in the final, which will probably be at Madison Square Garden in New York. I’ve got to do the business in my next fight, or its curtains.”
Froch-Abraham will take place on October 2 in Monaco. Ward-Dirrell is still scheduled for September 25 but may be delayed.
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