CARL Froch is struggling to hold his emotions together ahead of Saturday night’s British super fight with George Groves, according to Swindon trainer Paddy Fitzpatrick.

Groves visibly got under Froch’s skin in the build-up to the pair’s last bout but with the help of a sports pyschologist, the WBA and IBF super-middleweight world champion has cut a calmer exterior during his verbal sparring with his rival.

Fitzpatrick however is not buying into Froch’s calmer persona and likened him to a little kid who is about to spit his dummy out.

“He (Carl Froch) is trying to deal with it as best he can and that is exactly what he is doing,” said Fitzpatrick, who trains challenger Groves. “He is rehearsing things that his pyschologist is telling him to say.

“He doesn’t talk about George in a negative way any more because if he does it would be like opening the floodgate to the things that he wants to say and get off his chest and then that turns into a rant. He approaches him by calling him George, or Mr Groves, or George Groves and these are all things that he has been told he has to do.”

Fitzpatrick claims it is only a matter of time before Froch will “explode” emotionally with the fight just days away.

He added: “Same as anyone that ever fought Mike Tyson, it is all right when you have 12 weeks to go, eight weeks to go, and then four weeks to go when everyone is telling you “you can do this, you can do this”.

“But then a week to go it gets a little bit more real and the last press conference and weigh-in day is pretty imminent and now it has come home and you have got to do this but you are doing it on your own with no-one else and it’s a hard thing to cope with.”

Having digested all the pre-fight verbal sparring, Fitzpatrick is convinced Froch is spending too much effort in holding his emotions together.

“He will come out try to be controlled then he will explode then he’ll implode,” added Fitzpatrick. “We tell the truth and then they react to it.

“I expect Carl Froch to be putting a lot of effort into holding it together. It’s like a little kid who you wind him up, and wind up but it’s that last little poke in the belly and they spit the dummy out and it all comes out and they start screaming and shouting.

“No disrespect to Carl, but it is going to be the same thing with a grown man. He is going to be holding it together until he starts getting tagged and then he is going to explode.

“I’ve never seen a bomb explode over 12 rounds but he’ll explode and he’ll be extremely dangerous and then he’ll be put back in his box by George’s technique and then he will implode because he is thinking too much. But he will be very dangerous, we are not taking him for granted in any way, shape or form.”