By Scott Gilfoid: British and Commonwealth super middleweight champion George Groves (13-0, 10 KO’s) fights Paul Smith (31-2, 17 KO’s) on November 5th at the Wembley Arena in London, England.

This is Groves’ first chance to fight since winning a hotly contested 12 round majority decision over James DeGale last May. Groves expects to be able to beat Smith, but I think we’re about to see Groves taste the canvas again like he did in his win over Kenny Anderson last year in November. I wasn’t too enamored with Smith’s performance against DeGale last December, but Smith still showed excellent power in that fight and in his subsequent two wins over Jozsef Matolcsi and Paul Samuels.

Groves said this to hayemaker.com about the Smith-Groves fight: “There’s definitely going to be fireworks on November 5th. I have no doubts I will win the fight which will enable me to progress to the world stage. I am certainly taking this fight with Paul extremely seriously as he will present a completely different challenge to James DeGale.”

Of course he will. Smith is already on to Groves’ hit and run tricks he used in the DeGale fight, so there won’t be an element of surprise if Groves falls back into that routine. Smith will be ready for anything that that Groves tries in the fight. If he tries to run, Smith will track him down and batter him the same way that DeGale was in the second half of their fight. And if Groves tries to stand and punch it out with Smith, he will be effectively fighting Smith’s kind of fight. Smith is the harder puncher of the two by far and I can see him knocking Groves out if Groves tries to stand in front of him and fight.

It’s going to be bad for Groves in this fight no matter what he does. Smith is too good and ready for Groves’ tricks. There won’t be any surprise because Groves can only fight two ways – running or slugging.