Former super-middleweight world champion, Carl Froch, has spoken on the moments in which he did not enjoy boxing leading up to his rematch with George Groves, and the medication that left him with ‘suicidal thoughts.’
On the George Groves Boxing Club podcast, Froch explained how injuries caused him to fall out of love with boxing.
“The reason I didn’t enjoy it was because I was injured. I was in pain. I was waking up Wednesday morning, I’m trying to get out of bed and my back’s killing me, my neck’s really sore form the spar, my elbows are f***ing enflamed. I’ve got bandages on both elbows thinking, ‘Am I gonna be able to spar today? Probably not, I might not even be able to do the pads.’ And it was that that made me not enjoy it.”
Although he went on to beat Groves for the second time in a packed Wembley stadium with 80,000 fans watching, in the lead up ‘The Cobra’ found himself starting to have ‘suicidal thoughts’ before the rematch due to an anti-inflammatory medication.
“I used to load myself up with a tablet called diclofenac sodium, an anti-inflammatory. You can also have naproxen – they’d make me go all mad in my head. I had some of them and I started getting depressed, it was weird, started having suicidal thoughts, it’s weird.”
The KO over longtime rival ‘Saint George’ would mark Froch’s last hurrah in the sport, leaving a legacy behind that the British and fans worldwide can enjoy for years to come.
These insights perhaps offer fans a view of another side to the sport – one in which fighters battle through trauma, injuries and negative thoughts to entertain.