By Scott Gilfoid: Commonwealth super middleweight champion George Groves’ victory over Glen Johnson last Saturday night seems to have increased Groves’ confidence to the point where his feet aren’t firmly touching the earth. Groves now says he wants to fight IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch, and he thinks he can beat Froch.
Groves staid to talksport.co.uk “He’s [Froch] got an advantage in terms of experience but I think I’m too young, fresh, skillful and quick [for him].”
Groves may want the fight with Froch but that doesn’t mean he’s going to get it. Froch has a full plate for 2013 with fights against Lucian Bute, Mikkel Kessler, Andre Ward and Adonis Stevenson. There’s simply no room to fit in an easy title defense against Groves. That’s just not an option that Froch will have time to fit in his schedule.
The problem in Froch facing Groves is that Groves doesn’t have the fan base necessary to make a Froch-Groves fight worth taking. That might change if Groves can somehow and get lucky by beating the weakest of the super middleweight champions Arthur Abraham, but right now Groves just doesn’t have a big enough fan base for Froch to waste one of his fights. Fighting Groves would be like Froch fighting WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly in terms of the low interest in the fight.
What Groves needs to do is just stay quiet and focus on trying to beat some relevant super middleweights. Beating a 43-year-old fighter in Glen Johnson last Saturday night was a waste of a fight because it proved nothing due to Johnson’s advanced age and because of the fact that he was coming out of retirement to take the fight.
Now if Groves were to take on and beat the talented Dirrell brothers, then I could see him being a worthy challenger for Froch. However, I don’t see Groves ever being able to beat those two talents, so it’s kind of neither here nor there. Groves is too stiff when he fights, too easy to hit, too wild with his attacks, and too slow to beat guys like the Dirrell brothers.
Froch will likely ignore Groves until when and if Groves takes on beats Abraham and then defends the strap one or two times. I can just imagine the kind of title defenses Groves would be having if he were the WBO champion. I’d like to see Groves taking on the top contenders like Kelly Pavlik, Lucian Bute and Sakio Bika, but my guess is Groves would fight someone like Kenny Anderson, #15 WBO contender instead.
Groves says he’ll be back in the ring in February against a still be determined opponent.
Comments are closed.