By Scott Gilfoid: Promoter Kalle Sauerland says that he’s close to making an announcement on the return of former two-time world title challenge George Groves (19-2, 15 KO’s). There’s expected to be an announcement next week who the next guy will be, and with the way that Groves and Sauerland are talking, it’s going to be a decent opponent.
Groves, #6 WBA, #8 WBO, #11 IBF, has been knocked out in back to back fights by IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch, and right now his career isn’t looking too promising.
Sauerland said on his twitter “Short @StGeorgeGroves update – we are very close to announcing something #ReturnOfTheSaint.”
Groves said on his Facebook page “Big news coming next week.”
The question is will Sauerland take the risk of putting the 26-year-old Groves in with a good opponent or will he merely find a fringe level bottom feeder or 2nd tier guy to throw in the ring with him while trumpeting it as a great fight? I mean, you can’t blame Kalle if he started Groves from the bottom, because he clearly needs to have some confidence building victories over some stiffs.
If Kalle puts Groves in with a halfway decent puncher at this point, I can’t see him staying upright for long. We might discover that Groves’ punch resistance has diminished from his two fights against Froch, making him vulnerable even to the bottom fringe contenders that he’ll likely be facing in his next fight or two.
The next fight for Groves is going to be someone that can make him look good so that Sauerland can eventually match him against WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham in 2015. We could see the Groves-Abraham fight after Groves gets one win, because I think it’s pretty clear that Sauerland is going to need to try and make the Abraham-Groves fight as soon as possible before either of them get beaten again. Both guys are so vulnerable that Sauerland can’t afford to let the fight marinate for any length of time or else it’ll be worthless to put together one or both of them gets stopped again.
A good opponent for Groves would be someone like #9 WBO Sergey Khomitsky. He’s someone who would give fans a good indication whether Groves has the kind of talent that would make it worthwhile for Kalle to keep working with. But if he’s someone that is going to get shaken up each time he takes a solid hit to the head, then I don’t know what Sauerland will be able to do with the guy.
Sure, Groves will be able to defeat Noe Gonzalez and Baker Barakat type of opponent, but if he can’t do any better than that, then Sauerland might need to cut Groves loose and move on to someone who can fight at the top level.
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