By Scott Gilfoid: It looks like Showtime Championship Boxing will be televising the August 22nd title fight between WBC super middleweight champion Badou Jack (19-1-1, 12 KOs) and #1 WBC George Groves (21-2, 16 KOs) from Las Vegas, Nevada, according to Lance Pugmire.
This will give the 31-year-old Jack a lot of much needed publicity having his fight shown on Showtime. Hopefully for Jack’s sake, boxing fans tune in to see the fight. Jack’s last fight against Anthony Dirrell did good numbers, but that was against a well-known fighter. Groves doesn’t have the same cache that Dirrell has in the United States.
“Look for a good @BadouJack @StGeorgeGroves fight on Showtime August 22 from Las Vegas to be announced soon,” Pugmire said on his Twitter.
Once again, Groves will be getting another world title shot after having lost on his first two attempts against Carl Froch. Groes was knocked out twice by Froch. But instead of the WBC putting Groves near the bottom of their rankings following those back to back loses, they ordered him to fight the light hitting Christian Rebrasse immediately in a WBC 168lb eliminator bout.
It was a huge gift for Groves because not only was he being put in an eliminator off of major failure times two, but he was also being put in with a light puncher who wouldn’t trouble him like Froch did. As such, Groves did what pretty much any of the top 15 contenders would have done if they were facing Rebrasse, he beat him and is now the WBC super middleweight mandatory challenger.
Groves may have been given a huge break by the WBC’s decision to let him fight in an eliminator against Rebrasse, but it still doesn’t mean that Groves’ chin has gotten any better than it was before.
Yeah, Groves is getting another chance, but I don’t see the outcome being any different than it was in his two fights against Froch. If/when Jack stops Groves too, the WBC and go ahead and put Groves in another WBC eliminator if they want, but they’re just going to mess up Groves’ career by having him get knocked out over and over again.
At the same time, the WBC will make their own organization look bizarre if they keep ordering eliminator bouts for Groves off of knockout losses. In this case, Groves has won his last two fights, so his record in his last four fights is 2-2. It’s pretty unbelievable to have a fighter with a record like that fighting in a world title fight.
This will be Jack’s first defense of his WBC 168lb title after capturing the strap last April with a very close 12 round majority decision victory over Anthony Dirrell. Jack did just enough to get the victory.
It was fortunate for him that Dirrell didn’t make some needed adjustments by throwing more punches because if he’d increased his work rate by another 20 punches thrown per round, he likely would have won the fight. Hindsight is obviously 20-20, but Dirrell should have been able to win the fight if his corner had gotten him to make some minor adjustments with his work rate.
Groves has won his last two fights against Denis Douglin and Rebrasse. Groves did not look good in either fight, as he took a lot of head shots and appeared to be buzzed on a number of occasions. I’m really not sure if the 27-year-old Groves has fully recovered from his last knockout loss to Froch from May of 2014.
That was a really bad knockout in which Groves appeared to lose consciousness for several seconds while on the canvas. As bad as that KO was, he probably should have thought about taking a year off from boxing to clear his head before coming back.
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