James DeGale stops Marco Antonio Periban, calls out Carl Froch

Despite a clearly premature stoppage by referee Howard John Foster, James DeGale's third round TKO win over Marco Antonio Periban was pretty impressive today, and after the fight, DeGale called Carl Froch a "coward," which may be the final bit of fuel that fire needs.

DeGale (20-1, 14 KO) clearly looked the better of the two fighters in the ring today, as Periban (20-3-1, 13 KO) struggled to keep pace with him and was being outworked and outlanded. But Foster seemed to make the decision to stop the fight as Periban was going down from a punch, not even giving him a chance to show that he could recover.

As for Froch, he's working as a Sky Sports pundit for the card, and he pretty much took the insult in stride, in that he downplayed Periban as a legitimate opponent, and gave DeGale some backhanded compliments on his performance. DeGale is the mandatory challenger for the IBF super middleweight title, one of two belts held by Froch. There has been talk of that fight happening in late January or otherwise in early 2015.

Will we see Froch-DeGale next, or will Froch vacate a title? He's never ducked a challenge to date, and it would be strange to see him do so now, especially considering this particular matchup currently has some real momentum behind it.