Froch vs Cleverly Media Feud Continues, Hearn Says Two Will Never Fight

Carl Froch has no intention of ever fighting Nathan Cleverly -- not even if there's a fire -- says promoter Eddie Hearn, and not only that, but he feels bad for the young light heavyweight titleholder.

The reason Froch doesn't want to fight Cleverly has been made clear, and Hearn says it's because Froch has no plans to fight above super middleweight, which would make him an odd duck in modern times, spending his entire career at a single weight. Froch only had a handful of fights early on in his pro career where he flirted over 168, but he's made the weight every time since 2004 and his 12th pro fight against Charles Adamu.

But it's more than the weight, too. This is all a nice way for Hearn to take a jab at Frank Warren with comments like this one:

"They could offer £10 million, the fight isn't going to happen. The money's irrelevant. Anyway, the offer they made us was probably half of what I'd pay Carl for the same fight. I told Carl about it last night and he laughed. Carl feels sorry for Nathan and thinks he's a good young fighter.

"My advice to Cleverly would be forget about Froch, he's a legend. You're not even at the races with him. Focus on Tony Bellew."

Hearn also says that Warren's team did send an email about the fight, then claimed they'd made a "huge offer," which he says is the sort of "publicity stunt" you must pull when you don't have a major broadcaster behind you. OH, BURN!

Of course, Matchroom being in bed with Sky has pretty much kicked every other promoter off of the network, including promoters like Frank Maloney and Ricky Hatton. We've seen this all happen before in the States, with promoters essentially helping to run a particular boxing outlet, and I don't like it -- it never winds up being the best thing in the end.

There's a lot of Top Rank vs Golden Boy in the Warren vs Matchroom feud these days, but unlike his American counterparts, Warren was crazy enough to just go, "Well fuck it then, I have my own channel."

As for Froch-Cleverly, if it were really just about the weight, that would be one thing, but as much as I respect Froch and think Hearn is a good promoter and do not at all like what Warren and Cleverly have started doing to Cleverly's career, I can't help but think of a feud from the ancient days of British boxing, back in the "2000s," that also never got off the press pages and internet and into the ring, between a LEGEND! name of Joe Calzaghe and an upstart, big-talking pup by the name of Carl Froch.

Now, I'm not saying that Froch should stop being a mean old Mr. Grinch, look into his heart, and deliver what Calzaghe never did. Instead, I'm saying that if Nathan Cleverly wants to be great, he should follow Froch's example and start fighting serious opponents instead of Tommy Karpency and Vyacheslav Uzelkov and almost Robin Krasniqi. At 25, he has time right the ship. I hope he at least makes an effort.

Cleverly returns on October 27 in Cardiff against Uzelkov. Froch is scheduled to face Yusaf Mack on November 17 in Nottingham.