Groves wants Dirrell to beat Bika; prefers fighting him

By Boxing News - 08/13/2014 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: Former two time world title challenger George Groves (19-2, 15 KOs) is hoping #6 WBC Anthony Dirrell (26-0-1, 22 KOs) will beat WBC super middleweight champion Sakio Bika (32-5-3, 21 KOs) in their rematch this Saturday at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.

Groves likes the idea of fighting the well-known Dirrell, and he thinks it’ll be an interesting fight between them. Of course, Groves may never get the chance of fighting Dirrell or Bika unless he gets past #2 WBC Christopher Rebrasse in their WBC super middleweight title eliminator bout on September 20th.

If Groves loses that fight, he can forget all about fighting for a world title. Instead, he’ll be fighting for his career at that point, because things will be looking awfully bleak for Groves. That would be his 3rd straight defeat, and it would be difficult seeing Groves pulling out of the nosedive his career is in after a loss like that. Rebrasse can’t punch, so if Groves gets knocked out by him too, you got figure his punch resistance was diminished due to his two stoppage losses to Froch.

“I would say I would rather see Dirrell win simply because I know him a bit better and fighting him looks like more fun,” Groves said to skysports.com. “He’s got that spitefulness, which I like. The family name carries weight on both sides of the Atlantic. Also, with a name like that, any fight is less likely to have it stopped with a cut or something. When they see the name Dirrell, they want to see it go the full 12 rounds!”

Groves does not match up well against Dirrell at all, period. With Dirrell’s hand speed and punching power, he’d be nailing Groves with clean shots in every round. Dirrell has punching power like Froch, but he’s so much faster than him. At least if Groves fought Bika, he could sort of see the shots coming at him and brace for the impact from the shots.

With Dirrell, he likes to wait until his opponents least suspect him to throw a shot, and then nails them with big right hand shots. I’m afraid that we might see another fight where Groves is put to sleep. I mean, I hope Groves wouldn’t get knocked out early, because that would take away from the fight, but I just can’t see him being able to take Dirrell’s heavy shots for 12 rounds without getting knocked clean out. Dirrell is like a cobra the way he springs on his opponents with his big shots. He doesn’t put his punches together like his talented brother Andre Dirrell, but he’s dangerous with his single shots.

Bika would be a tough fight for Groves as well, because he can take a heck of a shot and he can deliver one. Bika never stops coming forward, and Groves would be in a situation where he would take a constant bombardment from Bika. It’ll be a punishing fight for Groves if he lasts the full 12 rounds, but I don’t think he will.

If Froch was able to get Groves out twice by hitting him with some decent shots, then Bika will take him out much earlier because he won’t be cautious like Froch was. He’ll walk through everything that Groves hits him with in order to batter him with head and body shots. Bika is a very advanced fighter and we’ve already seen Groves fail twice at the upper level in his losses to Froch. Groves kind of needs to go back to the domestic level to try and start over from there.



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