Carl Froch has shed light on what his incredible rematch with George Groves on 31st May 2014 in London was like for him and how he treated it as his final fight.
‘The Cobra’ has been retired for over eight years now, with the second fight against Groves being by far the biggest of his career, defending his WBA and IBF super-middleweight titles in front of 80,000 fans at Wembley Stadium.
Speaking on William Hill’s Stripped Podcast, Froch spoke about that defining moment:
“You’ve got to a point in boxing where your legacy’s secure like when I boxed at Wembley in front of 80,000 and I chinned Groves and it was a grudge match, I had nothing left to do. You’re at the top of the mountain and all you can do is go down the other side.
He was out cold, sparko, asleep, don’t worry about that. I even heard him snoring on his way down.
I was a month away from turning 37 and I kind of knew: ‘I’m about ready to retire here’. When I was training for the fight, I kind of knew it was going to be my last training camp, so I put everything into it.”
The bout reportedly did about 900,000 PPV sales and was labeled as The Ring Magazine’s ‘Fight of the Year’ for 2014.
Being Froch’s final fight, he went out at the very top, having become a three-time super-middleweight world champion and fought some of the best names in boxing such as Andre Ward and Mikkel Kessler.
Froch and Groves have since made up and even gone around the world on tour together, similarly to the way Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn have done.
In the same podcast Froch also talks about Anthony Joshua and the ‘problem’ the former heavyweight champion now faces.