By Scott Gilfoid: David Haye believes that former two time world title challenger George Groves (21-2, 16 KOs) will have an edge against WBC super middleweight champion Anthony Dirrell (27-0-1, 22 KOs) when they face each other later on this year due to Groves having sparred both Anthony and his brother Andre Dirrell in the past four years ago in 2011 in Miami, Florida.
Haye says he was at the sparring sessions that took place four years ago, and that the then 22-year-old Groves was able to fight competitively against both Dirrell brothers during the sessions.
Andre Dirrell later said that he had to hold back against Groves after the first sparring session though, because he noticed how flawed and green Groves was.
Dirrell initially really went after Groves during their first sparring session because Dirrell hadn’t fought in over a year, and he didn’t want to take it easy on him at the time. But after sizing Groves up, Dirrell said he backed off and didn’t go all out on him.
There still isn’t a date for the Groves-Dirrell fight, but it’s likely to take place in the fall sometime. Groves is Anthony Dirrell’s WBC #1 mandatory challenger, so it’s a situation where Dirrell has no choice but to take the fight. Dirrell would rather fight more deserving fighters than Groves, who he sees as undeserving for a world title shot after his back to back losses to Carl Froch.
In a very, very strange move, the World Boxing Council ordered Groves to fight in a WBC 168 pound eliminator in 2014 against Christopher Rebrasse after Groves had lost two consecutive fights to Froch by knockout. That was a very peculiar move the WBC made, because it’s not usually a custom for the WBC to order eliminator bouts with one of the fighters coming off of two straight knockout defeats.
The WBC usually picks out fighters that are actually winning rather than losing. It was kind of an upside down way of putting an eliminator together. It was also controversial that the WBC picked the light hitting Rebrasse in the eliminator, because he’d only faced one slightly decent fighter during his career in Mouhamed Ali Ndiaye at the time of the Groves-Rebrasse fight.
The rest of the guys on Rebrasse’s resume were largely obscure guys from the 2nd and 3rd tier. Why the WBC didn’t order Gilberto Ramirez or Julio Cesar Chavez Jr to fight in the WBC eliminator is anyone’s guess. Having seen Rebrasse and those guys fight before, I don’t know how the WBC could select Rebrasse over them, and I don’t know how the WBC could have given Rebrasse such a high ranking at No.2 at the time that Groves fought him.
“George has proven to be very good at the highest level,” Haye said via IFL TV. “In his first fight against Carl Froch, a controversial decision, he hurt Carl Froch, who is arguably the 2nd best super middleweight in the world, obviously behind Andre Ward. So, he’s [Groves] proven he’s world class. He obviously got beat in the second fight by a stoppage, but that’s against a 100 percent Carl Froch. The guy he’s fighting [next] is Anthony Dirrell, who is a very, very good fighter. I was in George’s corner in Miami [in 2011] when these two guys sparred with each other. Anthony and Andre Dirrell – he sparred them both on the same day. He sparred four rounds with Andre Dirrell and four rounds with Anthony Dirrell. He’s been in there and he knows both of those fighters, and he held himself amazingly well; neither of them got the better of him. Andre really put it on him in the first four rounds. He then got in there with Anthony for rounds five through eight, and he really held it together. He showed me in those sparring sessions that he’s the real deal. That showed me there. He was competing against two guys that were really going for him. They were giving it to him. For a guy that they never heard of it was like ‘we’re going to kill this guy,’ but they didn’t. They had a lot of respect for George after that sparring session. It was a great learning experience for George, and I think this will give him an edge going into this fight.”
Anthony Dirrell will be defending his WBC title next month against challenger Badou Jack (18-1-1, 12 KOs) on April 24th at the UIC Pavilion, in Chicago, Illinois, USA. This is just a formality for Dirrell, as he’s just getting a voluntary defense out of the way before he defends his belt against Groves.
I don’t see much difference between Groves and Jack, so it’s going to be like Dirrell having two voluntary defenses in 2015 instead of just one. It won’t be until 2016 where Dirrell could face some tough guys if he can get Chavez Jr or Ramirez to step it up and take the fight against him.
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