By Sean Jones: IBO super middleweight champion Chris Eubank Jr. (25-1, 19 KOs) will be fighting tonight against Avni Yildirim (16-0, 10 KOs) in the World Boxing Super Series quarterfinals at the Hanns-Martin Schleyer Halle, Stuttgart, Germany. This is the $50 million tournament that Eubank Jr. is hoping on winning.
The underdog Yildirim has the perfect opponent for him to try and pull off a big upset tonight, as Eubank Jr. will be trying to wear him down with heavy fire power. In the past, Yildirim has thrived when facing punchers that have come straight at him the way that Eubank Jr. will be tonight. The only thing that Yildirim will need for him to have a chance of winning the fight is timing. He’s not going to win unless he has excellent timing.
“Fight like Mayweather? I will fight like Chris Eubank Jr. No way he will beat me,” said Eubank Jr. when interviewed after the weigh-in on Friday.
Eubank Jr. doesn’t have anywhere near the same hand speed and boxing skills that a prime Floyd Mayweather Jr. possessed years ago. I dare say that Eubank Jr. isn’t even as fast as the 40-year-old Mayweather Jr. we saw recently in beating Conor McGregor by a 10th round knockout on August 26. Eubank Jr. is a good fighter, but he’s not lightning fast. Fortunately for Eubank, he won’t need to be for him to beat the 26-year-old Yildirim, since this is a fighter with no real pro experience against good opposition, and he doesn’t possess the physical tools to win tonight against the 28-year-old Eubank Jr.
Yildirim arguably doesn’t rate to be fighting in the World Boxing Super Series [WBSS] tournament, as he lacks the qualifications and/or the needed talent to be one of the participants in my view. What Yildirim does have is good management that helped him get into the WBSS tournament, but that doesn’t mean he belongs in there. We’re going to see quickly tonight how overmatched Yildirim is when he gets inside the ring with Eubank Jr. and finds out that he lacks the tools to compete with the British fighter.
”The warship has landed fully equipped, fully loaded and all the artillery is pointing at Yildirim,” said Eubank Jr. ”I am the next generation, the future of boxing. On Saturday, I will terminate Yildirim, the so-called Turkish Rambo.”
It’s still too early to tell whether Eubank Jr. has the goods to be the “future of boxing,” as Eubank Jr. He doesn’t have the resume right now to be viewed as the future of the sport. Beating the likes of Nick Blackwell, Tom Doran, Arthur Abraham, Renold Quinlan and Gary O’Sullivan doesn’t mean that you’re the next star in boxing. It just means you were good enough to beat a number of flawed fighters that doesn’t have the skills to fight at the highest level of their respective divisions. Abraham, 37, was once a good fighter, but he’s well past it now. For Eubank Jr. to claim the throne of the best fighter in the 168 lb. division, he’s going to need to defeat these guys:
• Callum Smith
• George Groves
• David Benavidez
• Gilberto Ramirez
• Tyron Zeuge
• Anthony Dirrell
• James DeGale
• Jose Uzcategui
Some of those guys, Smith and Groves, Eubank Jr. may have a chance to fight in the World Boxing Super Series, since they’re competing in the tournament. But as for the rest of them, Eubank Jr. will need to pick them off one by one for him to claim the top spot in the super middleweight division.
Eubank Jr. passed up the perfect opportunity to show how good he is when he decided not to fight middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin last September. That would have been a good fight for Eubank Jr. to prove that he’s the next star in the boxing world. Eubank Jr’s promoter at the time Eddie Hearn offered him the fight against Triple G, but when he dragged his feet when it came to signing the contract, the same deal was offered to Kell Brook. He readily signed, and the rest is history.
So, instead of Eubank Jr. getting a big money fight against GGG, he ends up fighting Renold Quinlan and Arthur Abraham. Those guys are far below Golovkin in the talent department. If Eubank Jr. is going to continue to sabotage his own boxing career by not making the fights that he needs to make, he’ll never be a star. He’ll just be a belt holder, who is too picky, and who underachieves.
”So, you are coming with all your weapons,” said Yildirim to Eubank Jr. ”Don’t forget the first world war when everybody was after the Turks and could do it. We are still here and everyone knows what Turkish soldiers are capable of. Turks are soldiers, wars is in our DNA,” said Yildirim.
Yildirim has the punching power to pull off the upset tonight, but he doesn’t have the hand speed, work rate or the experience. Yildirim is going to need to walk through pure fire for him to have a chance of pulling off the upset against Eubank Jr. in this fight, being that he’s going to be getting hit nonstop. Eubank Jr. wants to make a statement in this fight by putting on a show. He’s going to be throwing a lot of shots trying to showboat and make Yildirim look bad. If Eubank Jr. doesn’t take Yildirim seriously, he could run into something. It’s doubtful though.
Eubank Jr. is so much better that he can win this fight even if he stays in 1st gear and fights in a conservative manner. Yildirim would be lucky if he could beat Arthur Abraham. He hasn’t shown the kind of talent or boxing skills that would suggest that he can pull off the upse tonight against Eubank Jr. If Yildirim had a few more fights under his belt against good opposition so that the boxing fans could see what he’s got, then he could be taken a lot more serious than he is. Right now, the Eubank Jr. vs. Yildirim has mismatch written all over it. Yildirim needs to show the boxing world that they’re wrong in counting him out.
