By Scott Gilfoid: After losing for the third time in his career last Saturday night in Las Vegas, Nevada, George Groves (21-3, 16 KOs) says he’s going to sit down with his family and make a decision about which way to go with his seven year pro career.
Groves, 27, was beaten by WBC super middleweight champion Badou Jack (20-1-1, 12 KOs) by a 12 round split decision on the undercard of the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Andre Berto fight. The judges scored the fight 115-112, 116-111 for Badou, and 114-113 for Groves.
The 116-111 score for Badou seemed like the most realistic of the three scores that reflected what happened in the fight. Groves was knocked down in the 1st round, and he completely caved in during the 2nd half of the fight when he gassed out completely.
Perhaps the only reason Groves wasn’t knocked out was due to Badou not having the sense enough to realize how tired Groves. If Badou put some pressure on Groves and thrown more than one punch at a time, he likely would have knocked him out. Badou left Groves in the fight by throwing mostly single shots and not attacking him in the way that he needed to for him to finish off the gassed out fighter.
“I’m now going to spend some time with my family and decide upon my future,” Groves said to skysports.com.
IBF super middleweight champion James DeGale has already offered a fight to Groves, albeit if he’s willing to agree to a 90-10 split of the revenue. As badly as Groves wants to fight for another world title, I doubt that he’ll accept that offer. DeGale’s promoter Eddie Hearn would obviously give Groves a better cut of the revenue than that, but we’re probably talking about 60-40 or 55-45 at best in favor or DeGale.
Considering that Groves reportedly wasn’t open to a 50-50 split of the revenue for a fight against DeGale in the recent past before Groves was beaten by Badou, I doubt that he’ll be open to fighting DeGale for the smaller money.
Other than DeGale, Groves can always look to beat three or four top contenders to work his way back to a No.1 mandatory spot before fighting for another world title. That’s what I would do if I were Groves. He needs more time to work his conditioning, and I think he could do that if he took on some of the top contenders.
I don’t think it’s a good idea for Groves to fight fodder opponents though, because he’ll then just score a bunch of quick knockouts which won’t do anything for him in terms of helping him build up his stamina. At 27, Groves may ultimately be as good as he’s ever going to be in terms of his stamina and talent. A fighter is usually as good as he’ll ever be at his age.
“After the worst of starts George showed not only skill but immense bravery to a split point decision which could easily have gone for him, certainly had the fight been on home turf,” Groves’ promoter Kalle Sauerland said to skysports.com.
Sauerland is probably right about the fight going to Groves had it taken place in the UK. However, that would have created a lot of controversy because the boxing fans overwhelmingly had Badou winning the fight. It would have made Groves look like he was given a hometown decision if he was given a win in the UK.
You can’t say that Badou won a hometown decision, because he clearly did enough to win the fight. It wasn’t Badou who gassed out in the 2nd half of the fight last Saturday night. It wasn’t Badou who was huffing and puffing in the last six rounds of the contest.
It wouldn’t have helped Groves if the judges had given him the victory, because it would have made him look like someone who was given a gift. Groves already has a controversial win over DeGale from 2011 in a fight that played out a lot like the Badou-Groves fight.
Groves fought well in the first half of the fight against DeGale, appearing to win 5 of the 6 rounds. But in the second half of the fight, Groves faced badly and arguably lost all of the last six rounds of the fight. I had had DeGale winning the fight 7 rounds to 5. Instead of giving DeGale a rematch, Groves moved on as if he had won by a mandate. I suppose if Groves had beaten Badou by a controversial decision, we might have seen Groves move on once again rather than doing the right thing and giving him a rematch.
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