By Scott Gilfoid: #1 WBO Billy Joe Saunders totally went after #2 WBA 160lb contender Chris Eubank Jr. (20-1, 15 KOs) today, calling him a phony manufactured fighter and saying that he’s going to lose his next fight against Gary “Spike” O’Sullivan (22-1, 15 KOs) on December 12th at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
Saunders beat Eubank Jr last year in winning a 12 round decision last November. In that fight, Saunders got to see for himself what kinds of skills that Eubank Jr. has going for him, and he wasn’t altogether impressed with him.
“So the paying public can see it, they clearly know they’re getting ripped off,” Saunders said to IFL TV about the latest mismatch between Eubank Jr. and 39-year-old Tony Jeter in Matchroom Sport’s latest card on October 24th on Sky Sports 1 from the Sheffield Arena in Sheffield, UK.
Instead of Eubank Jr’s promoter Eddie Hearn placing the Eubank Jr-Jeter mismatch on the undercard hidden away, Hearn made the fight the main event, and it wasn’t competitive at all. The boxing fans even booed the quick stoppage, and they appeared more frustrated than pleased with what they had just seen in the ring.
“He’s [Eubank] like a market fighter ain’t he? He’s a Dagenham market fighter, all fake. They like to sell fake goods. That’s what they [Matchroom] do, they sell him and he’s a fake. To sell that to people? People [are] paying a lot of money [for him] to just flash off a couple of rounds. You don’t get no credit for doing that – not after the amount of fights he’s had as well.”
I totally agree with Mr. Saunders. Why in the heck didn’t Hearn match Eubank Jr. with a quality fighter for the Sheffield card? I mean, if you’re going to have Eubank Jr. fighting in the main event, then it’s imperative that you put him in with a live body that has a fighting chance to win. Jeter was little more than a sacrificial lamb, a fighter who’d been knocked out in two rounds recently by Patrick Nielsen.
Why didn’t Hearn match Eubank Jr. against Nielsen instead of Jeter? How about Tureano Johnson, Arif Magomedov, Dominic Wade, Willie Monroe Jr or Antoine Douglas. Any one of those guys would have been world’s better than Jeter. It wasn’t even sporting. It was like hunting with the ducks in a cage right there two feet in front of you rather than flying around in the sky. I don’t know that Hearn realizes how much of a mismatch the Eubank Jr-Jeter fight was going into the fight. I mean, if Hearn realized it was a horrible mismatch going into the fight, then that is so wrong. How do you do that to the boxing public in sticking a mismatch like that as the main event for the Sheffield card? If it was me, I would have picked a live body for Eubank Jr. to fight. Failing that, I would have had the fight off television as the very first fight of the card before the crowd had arrived to see the horrendous mismatch.
“Eubank thinks he can box. He’s not a good boxer… He’s tough, comes forward and has a go,” Saunders said. “I’ll have a 10 grand bet with Eubank that Spike knocks him out, yeah.”
I think Eubank Jr. will defeat O’Sullivan in December, but it won’t mean a whole heck of a lot, because O’Sullivan already lost to Saunders by a lopsided decision a couple of years ago. The only way I see Eubank Jr. losing that fight is if O’Sullivan can hang around into the late rounds and wear him down with his big punching power. A loss for Eubank Jr. would be a huge blow to Hearn, because he thinks that he’s going to become a world champion in the near future.
Hearn is even talking nonsense about Eubank Jr. having a chance of beating Gennady Golokvin in a couple of years when Eubank Jr’s father “English” finally gives him the green light to take the fight with Golovkin. I don’t see any world champions at 160 that are weak enough for Eubank Jr. to defeat. He needs someone in the class of Jeter for him to become a world champ, and unfortunately there aren’t any 39-year-old fighters that have recently been knocked out in the 2nd round by Nielsen that are holding down a world title at the moment.
Saunders (22-0, 12 KOs) faces WBO middleweight champion Andy Lee (34-2-1, 24 KOs) on December 19th at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, UK.
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