Eubank Jr. to Golovkin: “Your belts are going to be ripped from you”

By Boxing News - 07/02/2016 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: Chris Eubank Jr. (23-1, 18 KOs) didn’t react too well earlier today to IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs) asking the Twitter world, ‘Who’s ready for a fight?” Eubank Jr. immediately fired off both barrels at GGG, saying that he knows who he’ll be fighting next.

Eubank Jr. added that he’s going to forcefully take the belts from Golovkin and bring them back to the UK, where he plans on keeping them for ages. If this pipe dream does work out like Eubank Jr. sees in his vision, then I sure hope he doesn’t keep the IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC belts hostage while he defends them against the likes of Tom Doran. I mean, Eubank Jr. hasn’t been exactly setting the world on fire lately with his gawd awful opposition he’s been fighting.

So, Eubank Jr. is going to rip the titles away from Golovkin and keep them in the UK for a long time? I wonder how Eubank Jr. is going to be able to do that. Eubank Jr. was marked up in his fight against Nick Blackwell last March. If a fighter like Blackwell was able to do that to Eubank Jr’s face, then certainly a talent like Golovkin should be able to do far, far worse, shouldn’t he?

Well, we still don’t even know if the Golovkin vs. Eubank Jr. fight will get made. It was supposed to have been done this week by Friday, and here we are at Saturday and the fight still isn’t made. If it doesn’t get made, it’s hard to blame Triple G, because he’s got no reason to not want to fight the 26-year-old Eubank Jr.

It’s easy fight for Golovkin on paper. Eubank Jr. isn’t blazing fast of hand, has average power, is easy to hit, has no real experience as a pro, and is totally one-dimensional with his offense. The best guy that Eubank Jr. fought was Billy Joe Saunders, and he lost to him two years ago and never even attempted to avenge the loss. I might not be fortune teller, but I suspect that if Golovkin lost to Saunders, he would have already have fought him in a rematch and knocked him out.

You have to ask Eubank Jr. why he never attempted to avenge the loss. It’s a no-brainer to me. If you get beaten, you’ve got to fight the guy that beat you if you want to gain back the boxing fans that you lost. Of course, if you’re not so sure that you can avenge your loss, then what Eubank Jr. is doing makes perfect sense by not fighting Saunders a second time.

I think Eubank Jr’s approach is that if you ignore the loss, then maybe the boxing fans will forget about it sooner or later. That might be the case. If Golovkin vs. Eubank Jr. brings in a lot of PPV buys in the UK, then I think it’s safe to say that the fans have forgotten about Eubank Jr’s loss from two years ago.

If Eubank Jr. beats Golovkin in September, he will almost surely need to beat him a second time in an immediate rematch. That’s just common sense. For Eubank Jr. to beat Golovkin, he’s likely going to take a tremendous amount of punishment for two entire fights. That’s like a career’s worth of punishment in my book. Even if Eubank Jr. is somehow able to defeat Golovkin twice in a row, my guess is WBA champion Daniel Jacobs will immediately push to get his title shot against Eubank Jr. so he can get some of that nice cash.

Jacobs would likely fancy his chances of beating Eubank Jr. because he’s taller, faster, more experienced and far stronger. As such, Eubank Jr. might find himself having to take three grueling fights in a row with two of them against Golovkin and one against Jacobs. That would be like Eubank Jr. having to run a gauntlet while being kicked and punched by people standing on both sides. It wouldn’t be a good deal.

I honestly don’t see there being much left of Eubank Jr. if he has to take those three hard fights. The reality is that Eubank Jr. has very little chance of beating Golovkin, and I don’t see him being able to get the ‘W’ in this case. The titles will not be ripped away from GGG like Eubank Jr. said, and they most definitely not be stored in the UK for a long, long time.

I do think Eubank Jr. is capable of winning titles. I just don’t see him capable of winning world titles. Heck, Eubank Jr. can win titles, but I see them as the minor trinket titles and not the world level belts.