Boxing

Boxer proposes to model in ring without a ring

Carl Froch won the biggest fight of the year in Britain, and then got engaged to a knockout.

Froch finished off rival George Groves in the eighth round to retain his WBA and IBF super-middleweight title at Wembley Stadium on Saturday night. When his girlfriend, former Miss Maxim Rachael Cordingley, joined him in the ring, Froch got down on one knee.

Froch called it an unofficial proposal because he didn’t have a ring, yet.

“I did ask Rachael a sneaky question after the fight but it’s not official,” Froch said, according to the Daily Mail.

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“I told her how much I love her. I didn’t actually officially propose to her. I was going to but I couldn’t sort a ring out. I will be marrying Rachael one day. This is the most special moment of my life — the next will be wedding Rachael and making us a proper family, me, my kids and her. This night will be remembered for defending title.”

Froch did admit that Cordingley did say “yes.”

Froch floored Groves with a huge right hook with about 30 seconds remaining in the round, with the referee immediately stopping one of most hyped fights in the country’s boxing history. He improved to 33-2, with 24 knockouts.

“This is the greatest moment of my boxing career,” Froch said. “It’s the biggest event I’ve been involved in.”

https://twitter.com/rachcordingley/status/472925872186720256/

Froch — arguably Britain’s top boxer for the last five years — dominated the center of the ring but only first connected with a left hand in the third round that rocked Groves back.

Froch’s punches were generally ragged and he walked into some punches by Groves in the sixth and seventh rounds.

The ending was conclusive, though, with Froch swinging initially with his left and following it up with a massive right that left Groves in a heap on the canvas.

Rachael CordingleyTwitter

“It was neck and neck, there was nothing in it,” said Froch, who wants to crown his career with a fight in Las Vegas. “One punch was all the difference.”

The fight captured the public imagination, and was considered the biggest grudge match in British boxing since the days of the Nigel Benn-Chris Eubank rivalry in the early 1990s.