By Scott Gilfoid: IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs) and Chris Eubank Jr. (23-1, 18 KOs) briefly traded shots on social medial last Sunday, a day after Eubank Jr. smashed a badly over-matched Tom Doran (17-1, 7 KOs) last Saturday night at the O2 Arena, in London, UK. After the fight, Eubank Jr. called Golovkin out when interviewed inside the ring. Eubank Jr. continued to talk about Golovkin at the post-fight press conference.
Indeed, the entire press conference consisted of Eubank Jr. talking about how much better he is than GGG, and how he’s going to beat him when/if they face each other in August or September. What was weird is that Eubank Jr. said only a few words about the defeated Doran. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a post-fight press conference where so little was said about the defeated opponent. It was as if Eubank Jr. hadn’t fought at all, because he sure as heck wasn’t talking about poor Doran, who he dropped four times in the one-sided massacre.
“I’m ready, who’s next? @chriseubankjr @eddiehearn,” said Golovkin on his Twitter.
Eubank Jr. didn’t let this comment go without firing back quickly with a response, saying, “You’re not ready for what’s coming. Sign the contract & we’ll find out.”
Instead of telling Golovkin to sign the contract, Eubank Jr. needs to sign the contract himself, because he’s the one that will likely keep the fight from getting made. Golovkin and his promoter Tom Loeffler wouldn’t have given Eubank Jr. and his father Chris Eubank Sr. a deadline of 48 to 72 hours if they weren’t ready to take the fight. They’re just waiting for Eubank Jr. to decide whether he seriously wants the fight or not.
If Eubank Jr. is just calling out Golovkin’s name to get attention from the media and the boxing fans, then we’ll surely see the deadline come and go without Eubank Jr. putting his John Hancock on the contract. It’s good though because than Golovkin won’t need to waste his valuable time any long messing about with him. He can leave Eubank Jr. alone and let him continue to defend his British middleweight strap while GGG focused on defending his world title belts. Believe me, there’s a HUGE difference between GGG’s title belts and his opposition compare to Eubank Jr’s.
There’s quite a few people who feel that Eubank Jr. is over his head with the Golovkin fight. However, there are more than a few boxing fans that actually believe that Eubank Jr. can beat Golovkin. The reason why they think he can do it is because of how confidence he comes across when he talks of the fight, and how easily he’s been beating his opponents lately since losing to Billy Joe Saunders in 2014. It doesn’t make much sense to believe that Eubank Jr. can beat Golovkin because he hasn’t faced the kind of opposition that he needs to for anyone to get excited about him.
If Eubank Jr. does take the fight with Triple G, then I see this as little more than his 15 minutes of fame. As the late American artist Andy Warhol once said, “Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” I believe this moment for Eubank Jr. will be his short moment in the spotlight. Once he loses, then the fame will disappear and Eubank Jr. can go back to whence he came in defending his British strap over and over.
If Eubank Jr. doesn’t fight Golovkin, then the name dropping he’s been doing lately will be his 15 minutes of fame. Of course, it would be a little pathetic in the eyes of a lot of fans for a fighter’s short moment of fame to be based on name dropping rather than fighting, but what can you do. Sometimes fighters prefer to bark rather than to get in the ring and test themselves against the best, especially after they’ve already been beaten before when they tried stepping it up against A-level opposition.
Golovkin likely has a lot of frustration he wants to take out on Eubank Jr. due to Saul “Canelo” Alvarez bailing on him after months of talk about a fight between them. Golovkin wasted an interim fight against Dominic Wade last April, and Golovkin also made the mistake of agreeing to step aside last November so that Canelo could fight Miguel Cotto. In hindsight, Golovkin should have stood up on his hind legs and insisted that he fight Cotto for the WBC title.
Cotto would have then likely vacated the WBC belt straightaway to swerve the fight, and then Golovkin could have saved himself a lot of headache by not waiting and hoping for the Canelo fight. That’s what I would have done. I would have seen right off the bat that Cotto would never fight him. I then would have taken the WBC strap.