By Scott Gilfoid: 43-year-old former IBF light heavyweight champion Glen Johnson (51-17-2, 35 KO’s) will be coming out of retirement this Saturday night to fight unbeaten and highly hyped [by the British public] Commonwealth super middleweight champion George Groves (15-0, 12 KO’s) at the ExCel arena in London, England. Johnson said he hadn’t heard a lot about Groves before being selected for the fight, but after watching a few of his fights he’s not all that impressed with what he’s seen of him.
Johnson said “From what I’ve seen [of Groves] I’m not impressed as such…It’ll be up to the judges to do their job correctly.”
Johnson is considered an underdog for this fight because he’s lost 5 out of his last 7 fights, but one of the losses was a questionable one in his last fight against Andrzej Fonfara and the other defeats came against Carl Froch, Andre Ward, Lucian Bute and Tavoris Cloud, fighters that most boxing fans would consider much superior to Groves. Johnson has lost some fights recently but he’s not been losing to scrub opponents, and I expect him to cut up Groves and give him a real beating in this fight.
Whether Johnson can win a decision on Saturday night is the real question. I think he’ll beat Groves and likely stop him on cuts unless Groves runs from him all night long, but if it does go to decision you have to worry that Johnson may end up getting the shaft in this fight because he’s the visiting fighter and Groves is considered the guy on the rise in this fight. We’ve already seen Groves win a questionable decision last year over James DeGale, and it’s highly possible that he’ll get one against Johnson on Saturday if the fight goes to the scorecards.
Johnson will have to really go after Groves in this fight because I expect Groves to use the same hit and run style he used to win a controversial decision over DeGale. It’s a really ugly style, and I can’t see it working against a quality fighter but it worked for Groves against DeGale in terms of pleasing the judges. I had DeGale winning that fight by a couple of rounds.
Comments are closed.