By Scott Gilfoid: With Commonwealth super middleweight champion George Groves (16-0, 12 KO’s) signing with Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Sport this week, Groves now thinks he has a good chance to fight the winner of the May 25th unification fight between IBF super middleweight champion and WBA champion Mikkel Kessler.
Groves, WBO, #3 WBA, #6 WBC, #7 IBF, said to Sky Sports News “Signing with Matchroom, I’m a step closer to maybe fighting the winner of Froch vs Kessler.”
Groves shouldn’t get his hopes up to face the Froch-Kessler winner because that simply isn’t going to happen. Let’s put it this way; Kessler is likely going to beat Froch again, and there is no way that Kessler will waste time fighting someone like Groves because he doesn’t have a fan base.
Besides, Kessler seems to be into taking easy fights nowadays, and he definitely won’t be taking on a top challenger for his next fight. Kessler will either take an easy title milking fight against a fringe contender.
Groves has an easy fight this Saturday night against Argentina’s Dario German Balmaceda (11-6-2, 7 KO’s) at the Wembley Arena, in London, UK. This is Groves’ first fight for Hearns, and he’s picked a nice easy opponent for Groves to beat so that he can shine. Groves next fight date after that is on the Froch-Kessler undercard where he’s slated to be the co-main event.
Presumably, Hearn is going to find someone halfway decent for Groves to fight, but I’m not holding my breath waiting for that to happen. It’ll likely be another soft opponent. At best, we’re likely talking about a fringe level opponent for Groves to beat up on and shine on the card.
If Hearn wants to make sure that Groves doesn’t get beaten too badly when the time comes for him to step it up against upper level opposition, he’ll think about putting Groves in with someone talented to see how he does.
Let’s put Groves in with Andre Dirrell or his talented brother Anthony Dirrell on May 25th, and if Groves passes that test then he gets to face the winner of Froch-Kessler 2. Can you see Hearn doing that? I can’t. Look for Groves to face a soft job on May 25th as well.
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