By Scott Gilfoid: #1 WBC George Groves (21-2, 16 KOs) has finally gotten his big chance to make a splash in the United States when he faces WBC super middleweight champion Badou Jack (19-1-1, 12 KOs) on August 22nd in Las Vegas, Nevada at a still to be determined venue.
It was already understood that Jack and Groves were going to be meeting up on 8/22, but now it’s official. Unfortunately, the fight won’t be on Floyd Mayweather Jr’s undercard on September 12th, because that would have been a big deal for both Groves and Jack to have that kind visibility, especially if the fight wound up as the co-feature.
I don’t know if it would rate as a big enough fight to be a co-feature on a Mayweather card, but it would at least be the third fight away from the main event. According to Dan Rafael, the Jack-Groves fight could take place at the Cosmopolitan.
It’s been three weeks since Badou Jack’s promoters at Mayweather Promotions made a deal with Groves’ promoters at Sauerland Event to have the fight take place. The date wasn’t final though until today.
Jack opened up some eyes last April when he defeated Anthony Dirrell, the talented brother of Andre Dirrell, to capture the WBC 168lb title. Few boxing fans and writers expected Jack to pull off an upset of this kind because this was supposed to have been just a simple voluntary defense for Dirrell, and there wasn’t supposed to be much of a threat for him. But to Jack’s credit, he put together the perfect game plan to beat Dirrell by applying unyielding pressure for 12 rounds to squeak by with a close 12 round decision.
In a rematch, I think Dirrell would have Jack’s number because he would be ready for that kind of fight, but he clearly didn’t have his game prepared for Jack’s high volume punch attack. Andre was telling to try and throw more punches, but Dirrell continued to focus on landing one pot shot at a time. He thought he would KO Jack the same way Derek Edwards did in his 1st round knockout win in 2014, but Dirrell found out the hard way that Jack’s chin is a lot better than it appeared to be.
“Badou Jack is a terrific fighter. He’s a young man who is focused on his career. I think guys like him — they become better fighters when they become champions,” Mayweather Promotions CEO Leonard Ellerbe said to ESPN.com. “I think he’s going to have a long reign as a super middleweight champion and he’s the kind of guy who, after this fight with George Groves, won’t be creeping up on anybody. George Groves is an excellent fighter, but he can’t beat Badou Jack.”
Groves is a good fighter. He can really punch for a super middleweight, but then again, I think Groves is more of a light heavyweight than a super middleweight. He’s huge for the division. After Groves rehydrates for his fights, he looks as big as Sergey Kovalev. I don’t know how much longer Groves will continue to be able to make 168 without it hurting him in terms of his stamina and strength, if it isn’t hurting him.
It could be that the reason Groves was knocked out twice by Carl Froch is because he’s fighting in the wrong division. Groves looked equally poor in his last two fights against Christopher Rebrasse and Denis Douglin. I had hopes that Groves would one day be able to find his niche once Froch, Andre Ward and the Dirrell brothers all retire or move up to 175, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen now unless he starts looking a heck of a lot better than he’s been looking lately.
Groves’ last knockout defeat came a year ago to Froch in May of 2014 at Wembley Stadium in front of a mess of people. The reports were that there 80,000 people at the fight. I’m not sure if that’s correct because I saw a lot of empty seats.
Maybe they sold 80,000 tickets buy a lot of people chose not to attend the fight. Their first fight was controversial with the referee abruptly halting the fight out of the blue while the two of them were exchanging. It was one of the oddest things I’ve seen in the sport.
Groves is exchanging shots with Froch, and the referee jumps on Groves and puts him in a headlock. In the meantime, Froch nails Groves twice while he’s defenseless and the referee does nothing about the two shots from Froch. It was so bad that it was almost comical. The referee looked like he didn’t know what was going on, and he sure didn’t do anything about Groves getting nailed twice while he was in a headlock.
Groves recently won the EBU super middleweight title off of Rebrasse in their WBC 168lb eliminator bout. Why Groves would want to waste time fighting for the European title at this point in his career is unclear. That kind of thing should have been done before Groves started getting world title shots left and right, not after.
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