Groves to fight on September 13th or 20th, targeting Bika for WBC title in 2015

By Boxing News - 06/19/2014 - Comments

groves95By Scott Gilfoid: Kalle Sauerland, the promoter for the recently knockout George Groves (19-2, 15 KO’s), says that he’ll be back in the ring on September 13th or 20th in London, UK. The plan is to get him an eventual title shot against WBC super middleweight champion Sakio Bika after Groves fight an eliminator bout to get that fight.

If Groves can win that strap, Sauerland will put him in with WBO 168lb champion Arthur Abraham, who Sauerland promotes, in a unification fight. It sounds like a good idea except for one problem. Groves’ chin might not be good enough for him to take 12 rounds of huge power shots from Bika for him to beat him.

Bika can definitely punch, and Groves isn’t going to get a cheap win over him by running around the ring like he tried to do against Froch. That won’t work because Bika won’t hang back the way Froch did. He’ll go after Groves and look to put him out of his misery straightway.

“George will box on September 13 or 20 and we are looking to get him out in London,” Kalle said to espn.co.uk. “He proved against Carl that he belonged at the world level and he was just punished for one mistake. The quickest way back for him to a world title via an eliminator which we are trying to arrange.”

It would be interesting to see who Groves would be fighting in a WBC eliminator bout. The top 5 contenders that the WBC has ranked are as follows: 1. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, 2. Gilberto Ramirez 3. Christopher Rebrasse 4. Maxim Vlasov 5. Anthony Dirrell.

It won’t be Chavez Jr because he doesn’t need to fight eliminator bouts to get world title shots. He can get them no matter what he does. It probably won’t be Anthony Dirrell, because he’d be very, very dangerous for a guy coming off of two consecutive knockouts like Groves. Ramirez, Rebrasse and Vlasov are vulnerable guys with rankings that don’t make much sense to me. Obviously, Sauerland will be looking to have the WBC set sanction a fight between Groves and one of those guys.

The question is how can the WBC let Groves fight in an eliminator bout for a title shot when he’s been stopped in back to back fights? That would be very unusual to have him getting in the front of the line after consecutive losses. I don’t know if it would be doing Groves any favors either, because clearly he’s not ready to be fighting for world titles at this point in his career. We saw that with the way he fell apart in both Froch fights.

Even if Groves were to get passed the likes of Vlasov, Rebrasse or Ramirez to get a title shot against Bika, he’d be in for a world of hurt against him. Groves could use up his fireworks early like he did against Froch in their first fight, and Bika will still be there landing his big looping right hands to the head round after round. I couldn’t see Groves lasting more than 6 rounds against Bika, to be honest.
“We think Arthur Abraham is a big fight to make possibly next year in a world title unification fight,” Kalle said.



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