By Scott Gilfoid: Fresh off his 2nd round TKO victory over the 39-year-old Tony Jeter (20-5-1, 14 KOs) last night at the Sheffield Arena in Sheffield, UK, the cocky WBA interim middleweight champion Chris Eubank Jr. (20-1, 15 KOs) is once again giving IBF/IBO/WBA 160lb champion Gennady Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) some of his lip by saying that he’s totally untested and that he feels he’s the guy to finally give the Kazakhstan fighter a test.
Like always, Eubank Jr. doesn’t explain why he’s not hammering his promoter Eddie Hearn night and day to pressure him to make the fight with Golovkin. I mean, Golokvin has some time to kill right now after his easy 8th round knockout win over IBF 160lb champion David Lemieux earlier this month on October 17th on HBO PPV from Madison Square Garden (MSG) in New York.
Golovkin is currently waiting for the Saul “Canelo” Alvarez vs. Miguel Cotto fight to play out so that he can see if he gets the winner of that fight or not. Even if the winner of that fight does agree to fight Golovkin, we’re still probably talking about the fight not taking place until mid-2016 at the earliest.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the fight takes place in late 2016, if at all. As such, Golovkin will probably have a lot of time on his hands to fight again in the next six months, and a nice stay busy fight against Eubank Jr. would be perfect for him. It would be like Golovkin vs. Willie Monroe Jr. 2.0. I see Eubank Jr. as another Monroe Jr. The only difference is, Monroe had faced better opposition for the most part than Eubank Jr.
“Most definitely [Eubank Jr. is interested in facing Golovkin]. He’s seen as the best middleweight in the world,” Eubank Jr. said via Michelle Joy Phelps. “I want to be the best. I feel that I am. So Gennady Golovkin is a guy I’m aiming for at the moment. Lemieux is a talented guy, but he didn’t go in there with the right mindset, and with the right game plan. I think it was one of those situations that is like a lot of situations with these guys that they’re beat before they even get inside the ring. They’re scored or they think I’m just going to go in there and survive. So obviously it wasn’t a very impressive performance compared to past performances that he’s had. I don’t think Gennady Golovkin has been truly tested yet. So I think I’m the man to do it,” Eubank Jr. said.
It’s nice that Eubank Jr wants to be the best middleweight in the world, but unfortunately that doesn’t matter. I think every middleweight aspires to be the best fighter in the 160lb division, but if you don’t have the T-A-L-E-N-T to become the best, then you’re just wasting your time with your pipe dreams. I think that’s the case with Eubank Jr. I see him as the type of fighter who will quickly get obliterated by Golovkin when they eventually face each other. But instead of acknowledging that he just ran into a superior fighter than himself, I see Eubank Jr saying that he used the wrong game plan, and that with a few minor adjustments, he’ll be able to beat Golovkin in the future.
We’ll then likely see Eubank Jr go back to the Tony Jeter circuit, where he faces more obscure bottom feeders to start accumulating wins again. At the same time, I expect Eubank Jr. to resume saying he’s targeting Golovkin because he thinks “I’m the man to do it.” It would be completely forlorn. It would be one of those situations where no matter how many times Golovkin smashed Eubank Jr., the British fighter would keep coming back mouthing off asking for another fight, saying he thinks he can take advantage of Golovkin’s slow hand speed or this or that to finally one day beat him. It would hardly be worth it.
We already saw Eubank Jr. losing to Billy Joe Saunders, and that’s pretty much enough for Golovkin not to waste his time with him unless he can avenge the loss and pick up a quality scalp to add to his resume like Tureano Johnson, who I see as a better fighter than Eubank Jr.
Eubank Jr. knocked Jeter down in the 1st round last night, and then finished him off with a flurry of shots in the 2nd round when Jeter made the mistake of backing up against the ropes. Referee Howard John Foster stepped in and stopped the fight at 0:29 of the 2nd, much to the disappointment of the paying crowd at the Sheffield Arena.
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