By Scott Gilfoid: The tickets flew off the shelves like hot cakes on Tuesday for the February 17th semifinals contest between George Groves (27-3, 20 KOs) and Chris Eubank Jr. (26-1, 20 KOs) at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England.
The fight sold out in 7 minutes, according to the World Boxing Super Series (WBSS) press release. That’s good news obviously, because it suggests that the WBSS is being taken seriously by a lot of boxing fans.
To be honest, the rapid ticket sales likely was more a product of the fans in the UK wanting to see the Groves-Eubank Jr. fight rather than them being excited about the whole tournament aspect. It’s a fight that the fans have wanted to see for quite a while. The WBSS tournament just made the fight possible. The tournament itself won’t prove who the best fighter is in the 168 lb. division.
It’ll just prove who the best fighter is in the small tournament. There are too many big names missing from the WBSS tournament for the winner to be viewed as the best in the super middleweight division.
Look at the talents that AREN’T competing in the WBSS tournament:
• Andre Dirrell
• Anthony Dirrell
• Gilberto Ramirez
• James DeGale
• Tyron Zeuge
• Jesse Hart
• David Benavidez
• Jose Uzcategyu
• Patrick Nielsen
Those are some very good fighters that aren’t fighting in the WBSS. As such, I can’t say the winner of the tournament will prove anything. The winner of the WBSS tournament will only prove they’re the best of that bunch of 8 fighters.
Groves, 29, will be defending his WBA super middleweight title against Eubank Jr., who will have his IBO 168lb title on the line for this fight. Both guys looked great in their quarterfinals fights against over-matched, hand-picked opposition. When I say hand-picked, I mean it. Groves and Eubank Jr. were able to select their opponents for their first fights in the WBSS. Groves picked out unbeaten Jamie Cox, and he promptly destroyed him in 4 rounds with a vicious right hand body shot on October 13 at the Wembley Arena in London, UK. For his part, the 28-year-old Eubank Jr. smashed little known Avni Yildirim in 3 rounds. That fight was a massacre of the first order. It wasn’t even sporting.
The Groves vs. Eubank Jr. fight is being billed as a grudge match, but the two of them seem more like old friends than anything. When Eubank Jr. was being interviewed inside the ring after Groves’s wipeout of Cox last October, he was saying mostly nice things about him. They were like 2 buddies. I hope for the sake of the boxing public, that the two start trash talking a little. Right now, they seem more like friends than bitter adversaries.