Weights: Groves 167.5, Gonzalez 167

By Boxing News - 05/24/2013 - Comments

By Scott Gilfoid: Undefeated super middleweight contender George Groves (18-0, 14 KO’s) came in a half pound under the limit at 167.5 pounds for his fight tomorrow night against #11 WBC, Noe Gonzalez (30-2, 22 KO’s) at the O2 Arena in London, UK. Gonzalez weighed in at 167 lbs.

This is a nice little mismatch. Gonzalez has good power, but was blown out of the water last year in April by Adonis Stevenson in a 2nd round TKO. Gonzalez looks good against C level opposition, but he looks horrible when he faces quality opposition like Stevenson and Felix Sturm.

It’s hard to tell how easily Groves will beat Gonzalez. I suspect this is a fight that probably won’t see the 6th round, and I got to hand it to Hearn for giving Groves such an easy fight. He sure knows how to match his fighters.

Groves hasn’t been in tough for two years now and Hearn seems to be stuck in the reverse mode with his career for some reason. It’s kind of like how Hearn has matched Kell Brook by putting him in with nothing but weak, record-padding opposition.

Groves’ promoter Eddie Hearn sees Groves as being one or two fights away from a world title shot, and he thinks he may be able to set up a fight against Froch if both guys win on Saturday night in their respective fights. However, Froch’s having none of it, saying to I Film London “George Groves needs to fight one person from my last 10 opponents – just anyone.”

Froch seems to forget that Groves beat Glen Johnson last December by a 12 round unanimous decision, and Froch beat Johnson in April of 2011. That means that Froch should in theory be willing to face Groves, if that was his condition in order to fight him. That’s obviously not going to happen. Froch will now set up some kind of other barrio for Groves before he agrees to fight him.

I don’t expect Froch to ever fight Groves, so if I’m Groves or Hearn, I wouldn’t even bother trying to get a fight like that set up because it’s just not going to happen. Besides, I think Froch is going to lose on Saturday against Mikkel Kessler, and that’ll render a Groves vs. Froch as pointless.



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