Chris Eubank Jr. challenges Nick Blackwell for British 160lb title on 3/26

By Boxing News - 02/11/2016 - Comments

eubank4333By Scott Gilfoid: #2 WBA Chris Eubank Jr. (21-1, 16 KOs) will be taking his career backwards a couple of steps on March 26 when he challenges British middleweight champion Nick Blackwell (19-3-1, 8 KOs) at the Wembley Arena in London, UK. It is an unusual move for Eubank Jr. to be challenging for the British 160lb title, given that he recently defeated Gary O’Sullivan by a 7th round stoppage last December in a WBA middleweight title eliminator match.

Instead of facing Blackwell, Eubank Jr. could be challenging WBA “regular” champion Daniel Jacobs for his title. The fact that Eubank Jr. is pushing hard to make that fight happen suggests that there could be come confidence issues going on with him.

Perhaps he does not feel that he is ready to face a talent like Jacobs, who recently destroyed the hard-hitting Daniel Jacobs in one round last December. I mean, I would favor Quillin to beat Eubank Jr., so I can understand why Eubank Jr. would not be in such a big rush to face Jacobs right now.

The thing is, Eubank Jr. shouldn’t have wasted his time and the World Boxing Association’s time by fighting in their WBA middleweight eliminator bout if he wasn’t ready to step up to the big time and fight Jacobs. I am sure there are many contenders that would have been more than happy to challenge Jacobs for his title after they won a WBA eliminator bout.

What is interesting about Eubank Jr. is he has been talking about wanting to fight Gennady Golovkin and even Amir Khan if he gets past Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. You would think that with all the blabbering that Eubank Jr. has been doing, he would want to step inside the ring with Jacobs so that he could at least try to win a world title at 160 in order to increase his stature in the middleweight division.

I do not understand Eubank Jr’s reluctance to step it up another level with his career, and I definitely do not understand why he is taking his career backwards to fight Blackwell. We are talking about a fighter that was beaten by Billy Joe Saunders and Max Bursak in the past. Sergey Khomitsky also held Blackwell to a controversial eight round draw in October 2014. I had Khomitsky winning that fight.

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Blackwell, 25, won the British title last year in May in stopping John Ryder. In Blackwell’s two fights since then, he has beaten Damon Jones and Jack Arnfield. Those are not high quality opposition.

On the undercard of the Blackwell-Eubank Jr. will be unbeaten heavyweight prospect Hughie Fury fighting a still to be determined opponent in a 12 round fights. We have been hearing for ages now how young Hughie will be stepping it up soon, but I am not holding my breath thinking it is going to happen on this card. I expect Hughie to be put in with another gawd awful opponent in a record-padding fight.

Hughie, 6’6″, still needs to develop some punching power before he steps it up to the next level, because he’s just a weak puncher at this point of his career. Hughie had a chance to fight for a world title last September against WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder and surprisingly, Hughie didn’t take it. What does that tell you?



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