Boxing Betting / Ralph Ellis / 23 August 2011 /

Carl Froch is a straight talking fighter who gives as good as he gets. Ralph Ellis believes that could be enough to get the British boxer through at decent odds in the Super Six series...

It seems the Radio Times is conducting a poll to choose the best interview in history. Frost-Nixon, the subject of Michael Sheen's brilliant film, must have a chance. The shortlist includes a few crackers, mind. Martin Basheer and Princess Diana, Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jackson, Katie Couric of CBS who exposed Sarah Palin's ignorance and damaged the McCain-Palin Presidential campaign in 2008. There's even Michael Parkinson and Rod Hull's Emu!

It's fair to say none of mine will get any votes, but who's worrying? One of the joys of my job is meeting top sports people and learning about what makes them tick.

Sometimes, of course, you wonder why you bother. You ask your questions and get back only well rehearsed answers from a sportsperson who clearly wishes he was somewhere else. I remember talking to Leroy Lita at the start of his first Premier League season at Reading. He spent half-an-hour telling me how humble, grounded and down to earth he was, and never once made any sort of eye contact. Instead he kept staring at the big watch encrusted with diamonds that was hanging round his wrist. Done well since, hasn't he?

Others are a joy, and Carl Froch came in that bracket. Ask him a straight question, and you got a straight answer. Perhaps when you are 34, stand 6ft 1ins of mean muscle, and are Super Middleweight champion of the world, you don't need to care about sticking to the PR script.

Froch was at it again yesterday as he began the publicity campaign for what he hopes will be his defining fight, when he meets Andre Ward in the final of the Super Six tournament in Atlantic City on October 29. Asked his views on David Haye's future, he let slip that he'd met the fallen former world heavyweight champ on holiday in Jamaica where Haye as good as told him he was ready to hang up his gloves.

More pertinently, he revealed he plans to bring the same straightforward approach to the ring when he meets Ward, who can be an ugly awkward fighter. "He uses head-butts and dirty tactics," says Froch. "But if he starts going in with his head against me, if the ref doesn't sort it out I will. Simple as that. If he's being dirty, I'll be dirty."

Now I know we should be full of moral outrage about that attitude, but actually it's refreshingly honest. And it's a sign of what a good competitor Froch has become. In his last fight when Glen Johnson hit him low he returned the favour in kind. It got him a warning, but Johnson never tried the same trick again and Froch went on to victory.

When the Super Six series started out, Froch was a big outsider to end up with the unified belts. He's worked his way through with that uncomplicated approach, but is still [3.1] to end up the winner. That's terrific value because at the very least his meeting with Ward, whose unglamorous style has meant he's never won over the American public despite winning Olympic Gold, is a 50-50 fight.

I'm definitely backing 'The Cobra' to win it. And I'm looking forward to talking to him again afterwards. Even if it won't win any awards.

Five things you might not know about Andre Ward

1. Born February 1984 in Oakland, California, his father Frank was a keen boxing fan who took Andre to a gym aged nine and told the trainer Virgil Hunter to "teach my son to hit and not get hit"

2. Hunter continues to train Ward to this day - and took over in loco parentis when at the age of 18 Andre lost his father.

3. He won the light heavyweight gold medal at the Athens Olympics in 2004, turning pro later that year

4. He's old school friends with cage fighting star Nick Diaz, and has been helping him prepare for UFC 137 in October when he'll fight Georges St Pierre

5. A practising Christian, he has set up a charity aimed at banning dog-fighting

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