On May 25th at London's O2 Arena, Carl "The Cobra" Froch will face the same man that handed him his first professional defeat, Mikkel Kessler. It will be a unification battle for the IBF and WBA super middleweight titles.
The first fight between the two was an epic battle in Herning, Denmark in 2010. They traded heavy leather from the first bell until the last. Kessler won via unanimous decision to steal away Froch's WBC super middleweight title.
Froch came back strongly from his first defeat to comfortably defeat Arthur Abraham and Glen Johnson via unanimous decision and majority decision respectively. In doing so, he regained the WBC title. However, he would go on to lose the title again in 2011 to Andre Ward. Carl Froch has no quit in him though, as his next fight was against the highly rated IBF champion, Lucien Bute. "The Cobra" was the underdog ahead of fight night, but he laughed in the faces of the doubters with a five round demolition of Bute to become a three time world champion.
Mikkel Kessler has suffered with an eye injury since the first fight with Froch and he was forced to relinquish the WBC title, shortly after winning it. But he too has come back strongly from a setback, with three consecutive knockout victories over Mehdi Bouadla, Allan Green and Brian Magee (to win the WBA super middleweight title) respectively.
These two warriors have a lot of respect for one another and they regard each other as friends. But as soon as the bell rings, their friendship will go out of the window.
I predict the fight to be quite cagey in the opening exchanges, as they each try to draw the mistake from the other man. The fight will heat up in the third round as they both start finding the target with heavy shots. In the middle rounds they'll go toe to toe and I wouldn't be surprised to see either man touch the canvas. In the championship rounds, Froch will switch gears and batter "The Viking Warrior" into submission.
In the post fight interviews, Kessler will congratulate his friend on an excellent fight and announce his immediate retirement!
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