Just about every week, a former boxing elite is rumoured to be returning to the ring to reclaim their former glory. Yet, in the case of Carl Froch, is the 40-year-old likely to be tempted out of retirement? Especially now that his former rival Mikkel Kessler has announced his return to the ring.
Froch, known as ‘The Cobra’ during his fantastic boxing career that spanned from 2002 to 2014, choose to retire on a career high after defeating his arch-rival George Groves in a London re-match in May 2014. After the controversial win over Groves in 2013 that resulted in heated arguments between the two boxers, Froch shut down his haters the next year when he knocked Groves out – quite the match to end your career on!
During his career Froch won a highly impressive 33 out of his 35 fights, with 24 of these wins ending in a knockout. Froch held the IBF belt, WBA belt and won the WBC title twice during his career, cementing himself as one of the most elite British boxers ever. So, after defeating Groves for the second time, Froch felt comfortable hanging up his gloves for good, he’d simply accomplished everything he’s wanted to achieve, ending his career on a high and letting his legacy speak for itself for years to come.
Still heavily involved in boxing, Froch has been spending his retirement working as a boxing pundit for Sky Sports, as well as being a PartyPoker ambassador. So, we know that his love of boxing and competition is still strong, yet is this enough for Froch to be coaxed out of retirement? Especially when Froch is well-known for his belief that retired boxers should stay retired.
Rumours really started circulating Froch earlier in the year when once-rival Mikkel Kessler announced that he would be coming out of retirement to return for a fight on November 11th against a rumoured Roamer Angulo. Froch and Kessler have fought twice before, with each man getting a win. The fact that Kessler defeated Froch for his first loss on home soil, could be a grand reason for Froch to end this rivalry once and for all by defeating the Danish boxer for a second time in a row. It certainly would make for a massive pay-out for both men, and quite the show for fans.
Unfortunately, since rumours have surfaced about Froch returning to the ring, the former champion has revealed that he did actually consider a return. Just 18 months after his spectacular knockout win against George Groves, Froch was offered an incredibly tempting offer to face-off against Gennady Golovkin. However, Froch’s former boxing coach Rob McCracken feared that Froch would be too rusty to return to the ring at his former glory.
McCracken went on to challenge Froch to spend two weeks doing his former training schedule to see if The Cobra could still hack it, a challenge that Froch himself admitted that he only lasted two days, coming to the conclusion that he was far from his peak conditioning and that coming back could ruin everything he’d built during his career.
Overall, it’s unlikely that Froch will ever come out of retirement. It would need to be the right opponent, enough money and Froch would need to be confident he could win. If he could tick all those boxes though, then you might just see The Cobra pick up his gloves again.