By Jim Dower: Unbeaten British super middleweight champion George Groves (14-0, 11 KO’s) pulled out of his scheduled fight against Kenny Anderson, which was supposed to be taking place this Friday, due to a back injury the 23-year-old Groves suffered while sparring. However, there’s talk Groves will now be facing WBO super middleweight champion Robert Stieglitz (41-2, 23 KO’s) next after Stieglitz’s April 14th challenger Mikkel Kessler pulled out of their fight due to a lingering right hand injury.

With both Kessler and Groves pulling out of fights, it leaves Stieglitz and Groves to possibly meet next. There are some boxing fans who believe that Groves really isn’t injured but was rather looking to take the bigger fight against the 30-year-old Russian born Stieglitz instead of the risky bout against British title challenger Kenny Anderson.

It would make sense if that’s what Groves did, and you could hardly blame him because the money is better against Stieglitz and it’s a winnable world title fight. Is Groves ready for a step up against someone like Stiegliz? That’s the big question because Groves has little experience against quality opposition and in his biggest fight of his short four-year pro career he labored to a controversial 12 round majority decision against former 2008 Olympic Gold Medalist James DeGale. Stieglitz appears to be a better fighter than DeGale and in looking at it from that frame, you’d have to think that Groves will lose to Stieglitz. The only fighters that have given Stieglitz problems was the hard hitting Alejandro Berrio and the high volume puncher Librado Andrade earlier in Stieglitz’s career.

Groves will have problems with Stieglitz’s high work rate because he won’t be able to beat him in Germany by running around the ring, trowing occasional shots and using mostly feints. In Germany, the visiting fighter actually has to fight and not run around the ring feinting all night like Groves oftentimes does. The problem that Groves has is he’s got too much of David Haye’s style of fighting, which is a fighting style that uses a lot of circling the ring, tons of feints and very few punches thrown. In doing so, Groves and Haye limit how often their hit but they slow their fights down to a stall. Groves won’t get a decision with that fighting style in Germany, not in a million years.