By Scott Gilfoid: Commonwealth super middleweight champion George Groves (16-0, 12 KO’s) defeated 43-year-old Glen Johnson on December 15th of this month in a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision over the recently retired veteran. Johnson came out of retirement to take the fight, and he honestly should have stayed there because he didn’t have much left in his once excellent game. Groves says he’ll be back in the ring in February next year against an opponent still to be determined.
With Groves holding a domestic strap, he’ll likely have to defend it against one of the domestic, non-world class fighters. Groves should really get a clue and dump the Commonwealth strap because it’s dead weight and like an anchor pulling him down and forcing himself to fight guys that aren’t going to help his career.
Facing 2nd tier opposition is good at the beginning of a boxing career but now when you’ve been at it for four years and still haven’t stepped it up against quality opposition, unless you count 43-year-old past his best Glen Johnson as a quality opponent.
Groves wants to fight one, possibly two more times before going after a world title against likely WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham next year. I don’t think he’ll be any better off by fighting once or a thousand times, because Groves isn’t going to be ready to fight a talent like Abraham.
That guy has way too much power for Groves, and it’s not something that will change in the future. I suppose Groves can wait Abraham out until he retires, gets beaten by someone else, or is too old to fight at a top level, but that might take too long.
Groves can’t just sit around fighting one domestic level fighter after another while waiting for someone else to beat Abraham. Groves should just get it over with and face Abraham as soon as possible so that he can find out what I already know – that Groves doesn’t have what it takes to beat Abraham. That’s too bad because that’s the weakest of the super middleweight champions and Abraham wouldn’t stand a chance against the other champions Mikkel Kessler, Carl Froch and Andre Ward.
Look for Groves to fight a domestic level opponent in February in another boring one-sided fight.