Darren Barker has taken the right decision to retire and can spend the rest of his life looking back on his world title-winning career with great pride
Character
Darren is obviously a good talker and he's done tremendously well in a career. He could go on and do whatever he wanted.
He's that sort of character - an engaging, intelligent, nice guy - but I, for one, would like to see him around the sport.
It's quite difficult for world champions to become trainers. When you've been up there at the heights and then you become an assistant, it's difficult. There aren't many that go on to ply their trade as trainers afterwards.
It's because you were good at doing things for yourself. You were good at pushing yourself. Perhaps, also, you are so worn out from pushing yourself for so many years that you can't be bothered to push anybody else!
I would like to see Darren around the game.
He can talk well and there's always jobs for him in punditry... as long as he stays off my job! He's from a fighting family and I know he'll be around the game and that's good enough for me.
Rematch
Carl Froch is sill fighting, though, and if I was him and my options were Andre Ward, Adonis Stevenson, Gennady Golovkin, Sergey Kovalev and George Groves, I would take George Groves. It's a big pay day.
In addition, Carl made mistakes. He has to go back to the drawing board and address what he did wrong. Carl Froch is still a better fighter than George Groves at this moment, so if he does things properly next time then he should win in more style.
The thing about Ward is that he doesn't sell tickets and is far too good. If he was Floyd Mayweather Jr then it would be the only fight out there but he doesn't and he's struggling with the TV companies. I would forget about him if I was Froch.
Stevenson is too big and too strong for Froch. Kovalev is too big and too strong for Froch. Golovkin is just very, very good. Too good. So the best fight out there is Groves - it's the sensible one and the pay day.
Froch fell into every trap Groves set and he even told me in Stuttgart that he went into the bout 'not nervous.' He wasn't bothered. He went in there thinking he was going to smash him and you can't do that in this game.
You have to have some respect and you have to have some fear. Now when he fights Groves, he'll go in there wary and it'll be a better Carl Froch.
I think Froch will still beat him on brute force rather than just technically beat him, but he has to give him more respect.
He showed none before as if to say 'How dare you?' Now he's back down to earth, feet back on the floor and he can do it properly.
Showbiz corner
I was at a film premiere at The Dorchester and it was nice that Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro came over to say hello to me! Stallone came over wanting to meet me and that was lovely.
They came over to shake my hand. I told Stallone that I'm from the generation that watched all those Rocky films and they inspired me to win a world title. I used to watch Rocky wearing a headband!
I was stood there with De Niro and we're both grandfathers - that's all we have in common because he can act and I can't.
An interesting twist here is that Stallone once told me I wasn't tall enough to be in Judge Dredd. I was acting back then and the director, Danny Cannon, told me I was going to play one of the guards around Stallone... but when I got down to wardrobe they told me I was too tall!
