Did George Groves’ Mind Games Work Against Him?

Did George Groves’ Mind Games Work Against Him?

As the dust settles a little after the unsatisfactory ending to the outstanding IBF / WBA Super-Middleweight scrap between Carl Froch and George Groves, it’s a good time for calm reflection on the use of the mind games employed by George Groves.

As George has admitted since the 9^th round stoppage defeat, he made a deliberate and consistent attempt to destabilize Carl Froch mentally throughout their meetings at various press conferences, on Ringside, on Twitter, at the weigh-in and even as they faced off across the ring.

As someone who works with boxers on developing mental qualities, I was fascinated and delighted to see a boxer execute such a structured and thought-out plan.  It was interesting to watch Froch start each of the later meetings with his own plan, but not being able to control his irritation as Groves focused on exactly what he wanted to do and how he wanted to behave.

At every opportunity, he made a concerted effort to repeat a number of statements that he felt to be true.  The aim of this would be two-fold;

1) To reinforce his own belief that victory was not only possible, but also inevitable – he has commented many times since last Saturday that he was merely repeating “truths” – The actual truth is that he was repeating “selected truths” that reinforced his belief and enhanced his confidence.

2) To affect Carl Froch’s mental state ahead of the fight – without being privy to exactly what Groves was trying to achieve, it’s possible to speculate that he was trying to irritate him so much that he fought with great indiscipline or maybe Groves believed there was fragility to Froch’s confidence that he could capitalize on.

So, the big question is Did The Mind Games work for Groves?

To answer this, let’s have a look at the previously mentioned two aims of Groves’ plan:

1) There is no doubt that Groves had convinced himself he would win.  He would have done this by thinking through his game plan in great detail by identifying his own strengths and Froch’s weaknesses, being certain that the game plan would be successful, training at such an intense level to be able to execute the plan, and interpreting Froch’s obvious annoyance during their meetings as proof that his plan was working – all these aspects would each be fuelling even more belief.

All of this was proved to be correct during his stunning performance for 6, 7 or 8 rounds (depending on how you saw the fight), however.

2) When we look at whether Groves affected Froch’s mental state, things get a little more complicated, because the question is whether Groves affected Froch’s mental state in a way that worked against Groves’ goals?  Did Froch fight angry? I don’t think so, I believe Froch was experienced enough to maintain the right level of high intensity on the edge, without falling off.  The area open to conjecture is that the approach of Groves drove Froch in camp to push himself as hard (if not harder) than he usually does, and he’s diligent to say the least every time!  It’s quite easy to make the suggestion that if Froch had taken his foot off the pedal at any time during camp that he wouldn’t have been able to survive that savage knockdown in Round One and subsequent barrage over the first six rounds.

So what’s my view overall as a mental performance coach? Did Groves’ Mind Games work against him?  Well, first of all I would applaud Groves for recognizing the potential advantages of having a detailed plan to work on the mental side and reaping some huge benefits for it, which were beautifully demonstrated by his performance for eight rounds.  However, I think one by-product of the plan counted massively against him and that was to motivate the development of that extra level of physical resilience that champions are capable of and that got Froch through some nightmarish moments.

As the clamor for a rematch continues, I for one, will be fascinated to see what mind games are involved in the build up given that Groves has explained his game plan for this battle so fully.

Who knows, maybe I’ll get the call to work with one of them to devise and execute a plan to win the battle for mental supremacy – I have my own ideas for both of them!

-Sean Ryder

Contributor for www.BehindTheGloves.com

Sean Ryder runs Deliver Your Ability, a mental performance consultancy for professional boxers in the UK