By Scott Gilfoid: British and Commonwealth super middleweight champion George Groves (13-0, 10 KO’s) has a tough test ahead of him against former British champion Paul Smith (31-2, 17 KO’s) in a toss up fight on November 5th at the Wembley Arena in London, England.

This fight can truly go either way depending on whether Groves decides to stand and fight it out or run like he did in his very questionable 12 round majority decision over James DeGale last May.

Smith, 28, has the power advantage in this fight and is the better slugger of the two. Smith hasn’t fought too many runners, though, so if Groves sticks to the same strategy that he did in his last fight against DeGale where Groves moved constantly for 12 rounds, Smith is going to have to be good at cutting off the ring to prevent Groves from running and stealing a decision.

Speaking with Ifilmlondon.com, Groves said “The fight is] More than slightly in my favor. I feel that I’m the better fighter, the better tecnician. When it comes down to hear, and guts, and strength, and punching power, stuff like that, I still feel I got him [Smith] beat there as well. But he asks a lot of difficult questions. He’s a good fighter. The hardest thing for me is he didn’t really perform too well in his last two fights. You can’t look at those two fights and jduge him up on those fights because he can be better than that. Because of that, I need to be better.”

I think Groves’ may be having memory problems because in Smith’s last fight against Paul Samuels, Smith destroyed Samuels in a 1st round knokcout. And in his fight before that, Smith knocked out Jozsef Matolcsi in the 1st round. Those are two 1st round knockouts for Smith. It doesn’t get any better than that, does it? I think Groves is talking about Smith’s loss to James DeGale in December 2010, and Smith’s 12 round decision over Tony Dodson in March 2010.

Smith didn’t look great in those fights, to be sure, but he showed good power. The thing is DeGale was so busy with his own shots that Smith was kept off balance from the constant incoming fire. The Dodson fight was a real mess – a lot of holding, wrestling and headbutts. You can’t fault Smith for not shining in that bout because it wasn’t a good style match-up for Smith.