Groves: Bika and Dirrell are winnable fights for me

By Boxing News - 07/11/2014 - Comments

groves4442221By Scott Gilfoid: George Groves (19-2, 15 KOs) has been stopped in his last two fights in defeats at the hands of IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch. The WBC still feels that Groves is a worthy enough contender to fight in their WBC super middleweight eliminator bout on September 20th against Christopher Rebrasse (22-2-3, 6 KO’s) at the Wembley Arena in London, UK.

Groves expects to get through that fight in flying colors, and then take on the winner of the August 16th fight between WBC 168 pound champion Sakio Bika (32-5-3, 21 KOs) and Anthony Dirrell (26-0-1, 22 KO’s) later on this year in December for the WBC title.

Groves feels that he’ll beat either of those two fighters for some reason despite the fact that they both have respectable power. Dirrell is faster, and arguably has better one-punch power than Froch. He may not put his shots together like Froch, but in terms of one-punch power, Dirrell appears to be the more powerful puncher than Froch.

“I think they [Bika and Dirrell] both are tough fights but both winnable ones for me,” Groves said to Skysports.com. “I’m confident of beating both.”

After seeing how easily Froch stopped Groves in his last two fights, I don’t think it’s a very good idea that Sauerland Events match Groves against the winner of the Dirrell-Bika II fight, because the odds are that Groves will get starched out by either of them. I mean, Groves does a great job of attracting interest for his fights with his sound bites and taunting, but his ability to handle hard head shots has left him coming up short.

Bika and Dirrell are both very, very good punchers, and they’re both dangerous for a full 12 rounds. Groves would have to worry about getting nailed with big shots for the full 12 rounds, and that might be a problem for him with his stamina problems. I think Groves could give both problems for 6-7 rounds, but with Dirrell and Bika nailing him with huge shots in the last half of the fight, I see Groves dropping for the 10 count.

Sauerland would be doing Groves a big favor in having him go in another direction by steering him towards WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham instead of the Bika-Dirrell winner. The last thing that Groves’ promoters at Sauerland needs is to have him getting knocked out by one of these two talents. Whether Groves wants to acknowledge this or not, his career could be on skid row if he gets destroyed by Dirrell or Bika. It would be Groves’s third knockout loss in his last four fights, and a clear sign that Sauerland would need to step him backwards towards domestic level opposition, if they’re willing to do that.

If Kalle Sauerland goes ahead and somehow is able to get Groves a title shot against WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham after Groves gets knocked out by the Bika-Dirrell winner, we could be seeing Groves’ career finished off with Abraham knocking him out with a single shot to the head in a fight in 2015. A knockout loss to Abraham on top of his stoppage losses to Dirrell-Bika and Froch, would send Groves’ career downward to where he might not be able to come back from.



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