George Groves thinks Gennady Golovkin fight could tempt Carl Froch

Speculation persists that Froch could return from his two-and-a-half year retirement for a fight the dangerous Golovkin has long wanted and that would earn both men millions of pounds.

The Kazakh middleweight is regarded as one of the world's finest fighters as well as its most devastating puncher, and despite Froch's significant size advantage, Golovkin would be expected to win.

For the 39-year-old Froch, whose past fight against Groves at Wembley Stadium proved his greatest night and who had only lost to exceptional super-middleweights in Andre Ward and Mikkel Kessler, there would seem too much threat to his reputation.

Groves, however, does not consider that to be the case, and as he prepares to fight for the first time on terrestrial television, against Eduard Gutknecht on Channel 5 on Friday, he told Press Association Sport: "If Eddie Hearn turned to Carl Froch and said 'We've got The 02 Arena, you can fight Golovkin in 2017 on Pay-Per-View'...

"If I was a gambling man I'd say Carl Froch would take that fight.

"He's obviously enjoying being around boxing, that's why he took a job at Sky. I'd imagine what people have said about retired fighters, that that isn't enough, that won't be enough for him, and if he thinks he can do a decent job and earn money out of it, I'm sure he'd be tempted.

"It's up to Carl, whatever he's thinking and feeling. You look at him as a fighter: gritty, strong, decent punch power. That's stuff you don't lose with age, necessarily.

"Sometimes your punch resistance goes with time, but he demonstrated against me he's still got pretty good punch resistance."

Groves twice fought Froch and also sparred Golovkin, who incidentally lost to Gutknecht as an amateur.

He heads into Friday's fight at Wembley's SSE Arena in perhaps the finest form of his career, having already fought three times in 2016, and recognises the effect remaining active could have on any of Froch's potential preparations.

"He's had a few years out, whether that makes a difference or not: there's a difference between keeping trim and in the gym, and sparring and actively preparing for fights," he said.

"He's probably looking at Gennady Golovkin and thinking 'this dude hits hard but he's actually small', he's fighting welterweights - Kell Brook - and under-performing in that, Brook gave him a torrid time in one of those rounds.

"Golovkin didn't perform very well, he probably took the fight with a lacklustre training camp because he thought 'I'm fighting a blown-up welterweight', and the fight on the night said that."