By Scott Gilfoid: #1 WBC super middleweight contender George Groves (21-2, 16 KOs) is hoping he can beat the talented WBC 168 pound champion Anthony Dirrell (27-0-1, 22 KOs) and then move forward with his career to a possible super fight against #1 IBF James DeGale (20-1, 14 KOs) if DeGale beats #2 IBF Andre Dirrell (24-1, 16 KOs) to pick up the IBF title that will eventually be stripped from Froch for failing to defend it against DeGale.
Groves, 26, thinks it’s possible for him and DeGale to beat the Dirrell brothers and then move forward to face each other in the near future.
“If, for whatever reason he [DeGale] can’t fight Froch and keeps his mandatory status, he’ll be fighting Andre Dirrell and I’ll fight Anthony Dirrell, his brother,” Groves told Skysports.com. “DeGale is in a tough fight but has a good chance. At the same time, if I go out and beat the [Dirrell] brother, it sets us up for a super-fight, something that would certainly eclipse what I delivered last year. That makes for a fantastic night of boxing.”
At this point neither Groves nor DeGale have fights lined up with the Dirrell brothers. Groves’ situation is uncertain right now. While he’s the WBC mandatory challenger after locking himself into that position with a 12 round decision win over Christopher Rebrasse last September, Groves still doesn’t have a fight lined up with Dirrell, and it’s quite possible that he may need to wait until either later this year or in 2016 to get the title shot.
Groves’ promoters at Sauerland can definitely speed up the process if they open up their pocket books and throw some big money at Dirrell to get him to want to take the fight, but other than that, Groves is going to have to wait until Dirrell takes his optional title defense before he can even start thinking about a fight against him. As of this time, Dirrell still doesn’t have an opponent lined up for his next fight and it could take many months for him to get someone in his target sights.
I have to say I don’t give either DeGale or Groves any chances of beating the Dirrell brothers. DeGale is too slow, his punches too wide, and his fighting style too sloppy to beat a fighter as skilled as Andre Dirrell. If DeGale takes his wide, slapping punches against a guy like Dirrell, he’s going to get clowned and beaten up in short order.
Dirrell will throw shots straight down the pike to land to the head of DeGale and take advantage of his wide shots, and it’ll be a one-sided fight from start to finish. I see DeGale as a sloppy, slow, and undisciplined versioned of Dirrell once you strip away the speed, power and talent that Dirrell has. What you’ve got left over is DeGale in my view. As for Groves, he doesn’t have the chin to stand up to the monstrous shots that Anthony Dirrell will be nailing him with. I see this fight being a short 4-rounder with Dirrell flattening Groves, possibly with one punch.
I don’t see how Groves rates the ranking and the mandatory status he currently has with the WBC. The World Boxing Council gave Groves a shot to fight in their WBC 168 pound eliminator against Rebrasse despite the fact that Groves had been knocked out in consecutive fights by Carl Froch. I’ve never seen a situation like that before. A guy gets knocked out twice and yet the WBC lets him fight in an eliminator bout for a world title shot. It’s pretty unbelievable and I think it makes the WBC look bad for doing that.
Groves won his last fight against some little known fighter named Denis Douglin. It’s an understatement in saying that Groves did not look good against Douglin, nor did he look good against Rebrasse.
To me, Groves looks like he’s almost a shot fighter. He doesn’t look anything like the fighter that knocked Froch down in the 1st round in their first fight in November of 2013. But even if Groves was at that same level, he’d be really up against it in the Dirrell fight, because he’s a lot faster than Froch and more accurate with power that is pretty much the same. There’s not much difference in Dirrell’s power and Froch’s.
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