Adam Booth: Groves needs to lick his wounds and rebuild

By Boxing News - 05/31/2014 - Comments

froch788By Allan Fox: Adam Booth, the former trainer for George Groves (19-2, 15 KO’s), wasn’t pleased with the mistakes that he made tonight in his loss to IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch (33-2, 24 KO’s). Booth thought that Groves telegraphed a left hook and this enabled Froch to take advantage of it by hitting him with a right hand to the head in the 8th round to knock him out. Booth said that he’s gone over this with Groves during the time he was his trainer. It looks like Groves must have forgotten the lessons from Booth.

“George opened his arm out for the left hook. It is something we talked about from day one but if you make a mistake like that then you will lose,” Booth said to the BBC. “I could see from the first round that Carl was sweeping that left hook across. He was doing that to keep George occupied. George looked a little heavy on his legs at times and when Carl senses the time was right that is when he made his move. It was sad to see.”

Whether Groves would have done any better with Booth as his trainer is really impossible to say. It just seems like Groves didn’t possess the punch resistance necessary for him to ever beat a fighter like Froch. Even with Groves fighting defensively, he wasn’t able to do enough to win rounds, and this made things easy for Froch to control the action in the first half of the fight. When Groves did decide to start fighting back in the 7th, he made himself vulnerable to Froch’s shots by electing to do that. If he had a better chin, he’d probably beat Froch every time, because Groves is clearly the better boxer. But he doesn’t have the chin to beat Froch, and we’ve seen that now in their two fights.

“You cannot be naive against a guy like Carl Froch,” Booth said. “Underestimate at your peril because he is a tough old man that is a lot smarter than his style and age shows. He has to go back and lick his wounds for a while and look at what he did wrong. He has to rebuild but he is young enough and wise enough.”

Groves can rebuild but there are certain guys in the super middleweight division that will likely have his number the same way that Froch does. Andre Ward is one fighter that goes without saying is better than Groves. But also guys like Sakio Bika, Edwin Rodriguez, Arthur Abraham, Mikkel Kessler, Robert Stieglitz and possibly several others as well. Anyone that can punch will be a problem for Groves due to his lack of punch resistance.



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