Anthony Dirrell needs to get Groves fight out of the way now

By Boxing News - 01/11/2015 - Comments

groves6643By Scott Gilfoid: WBC super middleweight champion Anthony Dirrell (27-0-1, 22 KOs) is looking to have a busy 2015 in defending his newly acquired WBC title as much as possible in order for him to make some good money and start building on his unbeaten legacy.

The talented Dirrell, the brother of super middleweight contender Andre Dirrell, wasn’t too happy recently when the World Boxing Council allowed George Groves, a fighter who’d been knocked out in consecutive fights to Carl Froch, to fight in a WBC 168 pound eliminator against an obscure fighter named Christopher Rebrasse to pick out Dirrell’s mandatory challenger.

Of course, Groves beat the little known Rebrasse, who showed no power and looked very, very average. Dirrell will now have to defend his title against a guy who has lost 2 out of his last four fights in 26-year-old Groves.

This obviously has upset Dirrell, because he feels he should be defending his title against guys that earned their title shots instead of having it handed to them on a silver platter the way that Groves did with easy fights against Rebrasse and some guy named Denis Douglin.

Dirrell needs to get inside the ring and get the Groves fight out of the way as quick as possible. Instead of being unhappy with the way that the World Boxing Council does business, Dirrell needs to recognize that this probably won’t be the first time that he faces a guy who is undeserving of a title shot, and these things kind of happen.

You can kind of understand why Groves might be appealing to the WBC for a WBC eliminator after his two losses to Froch. Those fights brought in huge money in British pay-per-view and they sold the huge 90,000 seat Wembley Stadium in London. Having Groves as the WBC super middleweight champion would likely result in nice sanctioning fees.

Yeah, he would always be in danger of losing his title each time he faced a halfway decent fringe contender, but he could probably be steered around the good fighters for a while until finally being forced to face someone that would take his strap from him. However, the one problem is that Groves’ chin or stamina will likely betray him big time when he gets inside the ring with Dirrell.

Groves doesn’t look like the same fighter that met Froch in their first fight in 2013. I’m not sure what Groves lost in that fight, but he seems to be a mere fraction of what he was back then. I mean, Groves was always an untested fighter with a chin and stamina problem even before the Froch fight. Who can forget how the domestic level fighter Kenny Anderson had Groves hurt in their fight in 2010.

The only decent fighter that Groves fought after that fight was James Degale in a fight in which Groves was given a controversial 12 round decision in 2011. As such, it wasn’t surprising that Froch knocked Groves out twice in a row. But what is strange is how horrible Groves has looked since the Froch fights. He looked terrible against Rebrasse and Douglin, like someone who had aged badly and was no longer the same fighter.

Dirrell needs to get the Groves fight out of the way in early 2015 so that he can start facing the better contenders. Letting it drag on is a waste of time. Dirrell needs to put Groves’ lights out and send him back to the domestic level. Dirrell can then look to get more important fights against guys that have worked their way into a title shot like Gilberto Ramirez.



Comments are closed.