Badou Jack: Groves looks a little fat

By Boxing News - 09/12/2015 - Comments

Image: Badou Jack: Groves looks a little fatBy Scott Gilfoid: WBC super middleweight champion Badou Jack (19-1-1, 12 KOs) and challenger George Groves (21-2, 16 KOs) both weighed in successfully on Friday afternoon for their fight tonight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Badou weighed in at 167.5 pounds, and looked like he was ready to step inside the ring immediately to begin fighting.

Groves weighed in at 168 pounds right at the super middleweight limit, and appeared to be thin from having taken off water weight. You can always tell a weight drained fighter by looking at their midsection.

It’s usually badly sucked in, which is what you see with Groves with him weighing in at 168. I wouldn’t be surprised if Groves rehydrates to at least 188 for tonight’s contest, maybe even higher than that. 190 wouldn’t be out of the question either.

While that’s good for Groves in terms of the short term in a fight lasting 1-6 rounds, it’s going to be really bad for him if the 31-year-old Badou is still standing there after the 6th round. Fighters that rehydrate a lot like Groves typically does, they wind up sluggish and tired after the midpoint of the fight.

That’s probably why Groves ran out of gas in his two fights against Carl Froch and was stopped. Who knows how those fights would have gone if Groves had fought Froch at light heavyweight at 175. Groves wouldn’t have had to battle the weight like he obviously did for his two fights with Froch and his fight against Badou.

“He [Groves] looked a little fat,” Badou told fighthype. “[He’s] just ugly.”

I wouldn’t say Groves looked fat. I just think he looked like a guy who had lost a lot of weight, and who will be putting a ton of it back on before tonight’s fight. That’s obviously not a good thing for Groves, because it puts him in a position where he’ll need to push hard for an early knockout of Badou.

Yeah, Badou was knocked out in the 1st round by Derek Edwards last year, but Edwards is a better puncher than Groves, and the shot that hurt Badou was a punch on the side of the head. It was almost a rabbit shot. I don’t know of too many fighters in the division that would have been able to handle the shot that Edwards hit Badou with. There’s no shame in Badou getting hurt by the punch that Edwards landed because it was such a tremendous shot.

Groves is going to have problems with the amount of pressure that Badou is going to be putting on him in this fight. Groves really hasn’t faced a guy that puts the kind of pressure that Badou puts on his opponents before. Another thing that Groves will have problems with in his fight is the body punching from Badou.

Groves has fought mostly European fighters that fight on the outside and throw mostly head shots. Badou is a much different animal. He fights on the inside and he throws a lot of body shots that are difficult to take if you’re not accustomed to taking those kinds of shots. My guess is Groves is totally unprepared for handling big body shots, and definitely not ready to be fighting on the inside.



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