Froch eyeing stadium bout after defence against Mack

Froch took over-matched Philadelphian Mack out in three rounds with two stinging body shots in Nottingham on Saturday night as he successfully defended his IBF super-middleweight title for the first time. The evergreen 35-year-old is now keen to nail down his plans for next year. He is contracted to give Lucian Bute a rematch in Canada after battering the Romania-born former champion in May to snatch the IBF title but Bute’s camp may yet decide to leave the Englishman well alone after the beating he dished out last time.

That would enable Froch to make a mandatory defence against Adonis Stevenson.  Regardless, Froch’s promoter Eddie Hearn hopes to stage an outdoor blockbuster next  summer with his man facing either Mikkel Kessler or Andre Ward – the only two men to have beaten the Briton.

Hearn said: “If we fight Bute then we need to ask for an exception from the IBF and Adonis Stevenson will have to wait. Or we could fight Stevenson. We also want to fight Kessler. Meanwhile, the two top things trending on Twitter on Saturday night were Carl Froch and Andre Ward because Ward tweeted saying ‘I quite fancy a trip to the UK’. I think he’d come.”

Froch said: “Other than fighting here at the arena the next best thing for me would be fighting at [Nottingham Forest’s] City Ground. That would be unbelievable. To be there in the middle of that pitch fighting somebody like Mikkel Kessler or Andre Ward, I can only try to imagine what it’s going to be like. It would be phenomenal.

“For me it would be a career-defining fight. I’d rather do that than go to Las Vegas, with all the lights and the glitz. I’d rather be here in Nottingham, at the City Ground. That would be  ‘the one’.”