After conquering George Groves in front of 80,000 people at Wembley, Carl Froch is naturally one of the hottest properties in the boxing world.
The 36-year-old insisted after his spectacular stoppage against Groves that his dream was to fight in Las Vegas, per David Anderson of The Mirror, and he has already been offered the chance to do that by the WBC super-middleweight champion Sakio Bika.
That would give Froch the chance to unify three of the major titles in the weight division, an aspiration that Bika claims should be in the Englishman’s sights, per a separate Anderson piece:
When you hold three belts in one division, then you are the man. It’s something to look back on when you retire to say you held three belts.
It would be a very good fight for me to fight Carl Froch for the three belts because that would be a fight everyone in the world would want to pay money to see. If you held the WBC, WBA and IBF belts, you would be the king of the mountain.
But it seems Froch has a plethora of intriguing options as he chooses his next career move, with Jeff Powell of the Mail Online suggesting the Cobra could be set to fight Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in Sin City.
According to Powell’s piece, the US promoter Bob Arum has already expressed major interest in scheduling the bout for a November date in Vegas and has discussed the possibility of a showdown with both HBO and Sky Box Office.
Chavez Jr. is quoted in the piece as saying “a fight with Froch would be huge. I am already looking forward to it happening.”
Despite the expected hyperbole surrounding the Cobra at the moment, Froch’s promoter Eddie Hearn is remaining calm when it comes to his next move. He told Sky Sports News:
Carl will now take a few weeks off and he'll go and relax with his family and I'll be mapping out his future.
He has three options I think as far as we're concerned and that's James DeGale, Mikkel Kessler and Julio Cesar Chavez (Jnr). I don't think there are any guarantees that Carl Froch will fight again.
If I was to have a bet on it I'd say he would but it's very difficult after such a huge night like that to find the right fight and right opportunity that will make him get out of bed at 5 o'clock in the morning and do those hill runs and tough rounds of sparring.
Although Hearn touched on the possibility of Froch hanging up his gloves, it’s difficult to see the Cobra turning down a bout in Vegas, something he clearly desires.
The most desirable option for the IBF and WBA champion would surely be Chavez Jr, who would draw in the biggest audience and the most high-profile interest across the pond. The 28-year-old himself has just completed back-to-back victories over the same opponent, beating Brian Vera in impressive fashion back in March.
A third fight with Kessler would certainly be an intriguing spectacle, but it would only be going over old ground for Froch, who clearly wants to explore different avenues before he finally does retire.
The offer to fight Bika and unify the three belts would also be a tempting option, but whether or not the Australian is a big enough name to warrant a Vegas bout is certainly disputable. Nonetheless, master of ceremonies in Australian boxing Ben Damon thinks the time is right to unify the division:
Froch spoke in the aftermath of his battle with Groves on how he fulfilled a dream by boxing and winning at Wembley stadium. He’s achieved so much in his career that he has little to prove to anyone, and if he was to retire tomorrow, he’d do so as one of British boxing’s all-time greats.
With that in mind, you suspect only Vegas and only Chavez Jr. will be enough to write another fascinating chapter in the career of the Cobra.
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