Carl Froch injures back, fight with Arthur Abraham postponed

Rick Reeno of BoxingScene.com reports that Carl Froch has injured his back in training, which will postpone his scheduled October 2 fight against Arthur Abraham. The two were set to meet in what is now a semi-final of the Super Six World Boxing Classic in Monaco, and has already undergone extensive bickering as the Froch side refused to fight Abraham in Germany, while Abraham would not meet Froch on his home turf in the United Kingdom.

It's yet another setback for the Super Six tournament, which has seen one third stage fight canceled due to an injury to Mikkel Kessler, an ongoing drama between Andre Ward and Andre Dirrell, and now this. Ward and Dirrell were still shown as fighting on September 25 by Showtime on their September 10 ShoBox broadcast, which was really strange given that everyone knows those two aren't going to be fighting in 12 days considering they have no venue and I don't think either of them are training full-bore right now.

I'm not saying this is for sure because I don't know, but this seems like it could be as much a political move as anything. With the Ward-Dirrell fight being for all intents and purposes up in the air right now with Showtime threatening legal action against the parties should that fight not get signed and finished quickly, Froch may simply not be willing to go into a fight with Abraham if that fight isn't going to mean anything, or if he's going to have to sit around after and wait for Ward and Dirrell to get around to signing their fight, which is not going to happen on September 25 or "early October," which is what Showtime threw down in their notice to the parties.

The Froch-Abraham bout is now being looked at for November or December, which is a packed run on the American TV schedule, with HBO airing a fight every weekend in November through December 11. Showtime also has dates on November 6 and December 18 set, and Jean Pascal and Bernard Hopkins are likely to fight on PPV on December 18 as well. Meanwhile, everyone is taking off October now, unless Ward-Dirrell winds up happening next month.

I want to believe in the Super Six, and I think Showtime will make this thing work. Ken Hershman has put a mountain of effort into making this work against very long odds, and so far it has gone about as well as you could expect. Injuries happen in boxing, but even more often, politics happen in boxing. Right now I think we could be seeing politics at work. At the end of the day, as long as the fights get done and the tournament finishes out, we could still have three more good fights, which will erase a lot of the sourness the tournament is feeling at the moment. It's not coming easy, but that was the risk they were taking, and everyone knew that.