Kessler hires Brit sparring partners for Froch fight

PARIS (AFP) –

Denmark’s Mikkel Kessler (left) clashes with Britain’s Carl Froch during their super-middleweight fight in Herning, on April 24, 2010. Kessler is preparing for his May 25 unification title bout with Froch by employing a pair of British fighters as sparring partners.

Viking Warrior Mikkel Kessler is preparing for his May 25 unification title bout with Briton Carl Froch by employing a pair of insiders.

WBA ‘regular’ super-middleweight champion Kessler will spar with IBF title-holder Froch’s countrymen Nathan Cleverly and George Groves, as well as unbeaten light-heavyweight prospect Erik Skoglund of Sweden.

Cleverly is the current WBO light-heavyweight champion and a former stablemate of Joe Calzaghe, the ex undisputed super-middleweight and light-heavyweight champion who embarked on a long war of words with Froch before retiring unbeaten in 2008. The two Brits never faced each other.

Like Cleverly and Skoglund, the WBC youth champion, Groves is an unbeaten prospect who fights in the same division as Kessler and Froch.

For Dane Kessler, who beat Froch in their original bout in Copenhagen three years ago, this is the ideal preparation.

“It’s great to have them in Copenhagen. This is the best preparation I could have asked for,” he said in a press release by promoters Sauerland.

“To have three guys like that – a world champion, a youth world champion and a top-ranked contender – is probably as good as it gets in terms of sparring.

“They are young, hungry and unbeaten and they will push me to the limit. That’s exactly the kind of warm-up I need to beat Carl Froch again.”

Froch will have home advantage when he looks to avenge one of his two career defeats to Kessler at the O2 Arena in London later this month.