Four-time world super middleweight champion Carl Froch has announced he is retiring from boxing. Nicknamed The Cobra, Froch twice won the WBC title, as well as the WBA and IBF belts, during a highly successful career.
Froch won 33 of his 35 fights, with 24 of those coming by knock-out. He defeated arch-rival George Groves in a Wembley Stadium re-match which turned out to be his final fight in May of last year.
Froch, who will now add his expertise to Sky Sports’ boxing coverage, said: “I’m incredibly proud of what I have achieved in boxing but now is the right moment to hang up my gloves.
“I have nothing left to prove and my legacy speaks for itself. Nothing can replace the thrill of stepping into the ring.”
Froch told Sky Sports News: “Making the decision to retire and saying ‘it’s been a year, it’s too long, the fighting machine has gone, it’s not going to come back’, it’s still hard.
“The last thing I think about before my head hits the pillow is boxing, and when I wake up in the morning to think what time it is, and I think it’s half six, seven o’clock, should I be going for a run, where’s my trainers – it’s a lifestyle, a way of life, and it’s a mindset. I’ll always have that and I think I’ll always be itching for the big fight.
“There’s no greater feeling for me than standing victorious in the arena and I’m never going to get that again now, and I don’t know where I’m going to get that feeling from.
“I don’t know where it’s going to come; maybe it’s not. That’s what I’m turning my back on and that’s what’s going to be difficult to do, but there comes a time in every man’s career where he’s got to say, ‘That’s it, enough’s enough’.
“I feel civilised now. I feel like Carl Froch the fighting machine is still in there – the fire is still in the belly – but it’s been too long.
“I just feel like that fighting machine that I love so much and that I need to be to compete at the top level, I feel like it’s been put away for too long, and I don’t know if I can get hold of him again and go one more time. I really don’t think I could.”
Froch admitted in January of this year that the thought of never fighting again had some appeal. An elbow injury forced Froch out of a planned 28 March fight against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr in Las Vegas.
At the time, Froch posted a photograph of his gloves hanging up on social media, sparking suggestions of a possible retirement.
And the Nottingham fighter said at the time: “It’s no secret that I’m nearing the end of my career and I may or may not fight again. I was actually thinking to myself, you know, what if they stayed hung up and I never boxed again? It’s quite a nice thought if I’m totally honest.
“I’ve got two wonderful children, very young, and being at home spending time with them is good – and I think, ‘Am I still this fighting machine?’.”
However, Froch thought then that he would rediscover his appetite, adding: “I’m sure once I get back in the gym and start really pounding the bag and the roads hard in the morning I’ll be back to my old fighting self.”
Froch vacated his IBF super middleweight title in February as he continued to recover from the elbow injury that scuppered the Cesar Chavez Jr fight.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com
