By Scott Gilfoid: With all the mouthing off that WBA interim middleweight champion Chris Eubank Jr (19-1, 14 KOs) has been doing recently about him being good enough to eventually take on IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin and beat him one day, you would think that Eubank Jr would be facing better opposition by now.
After all, he’s about to turn 27. It’s not as if he’s someone in his early 20s just turning pro. Eubank Jr will be fighting this Saturday night against little known 39-year-old Tony Jeter (20-4-1, 14 KOs) in the main event at the Sheffield Arena in Sheffield, UK.
This isn’t exactly a main event type of fight, is it? Jeter, #13 WBA, is a fighter who was blasted out in just in just two rounds last year by Patrick Nielson in February 2014, and in five rounds by Jose Felix in 2011.
Why isn’t Eubank Jr’s promoter Eddie Hearn putting him in with guys like Patrick Nielsen, Tureano Johnson, Peter Quillin, Arif Magomedov, Dominic Wade or Antoine Douglas? If Eubank Jr thinks he’s good enough to beat Golovkin, then he should be fighting the above mentioned contenders at this point.
Why is Eubank Jr fighting in a main event against a fighter like Jeter? I don’t understand that at all. Why would Hearn do that to the boxing fans by having them watch a fight as bad as this one? I know the fight is no longer being televised on Sky Box Office, but it’s still an awful fight for a main event on Sky Sports 1. It’s just a mismatch. Jeter has never beaten anyone good and was knocked out in 2 rounds by Nielsen.
British middleweight champion Nick Blackwell doesn’t think too highly Eubank Jr’s choice of an opponent, and he wonders why he’s fighting an obscure guy like Jeter.
“I’ve never heard of Eubank Jr’s next opponent,” Blackwell said via skysports.com. “I just assumed it was an eight-round warm-up fight until someone told me they were actually putting it on as a title defence. That just blew my mind. It’s a joke. At least if you’re going to pretend to be some kind of ‘world champion’, fight someone we all know.”
I totally agree with Mr. Blackwell. Why in the heck is Eubank Jr fighting a guy like Jeter in a title defense? That makes no sense at all, especially with it being in a main event type of fight.
Did Hearn make this fight in order to make Eubank Jr look better than he actually is or was there simply no one else available? If it’s an availability issue, Hearn should have made the fight an eight rounder and put it on the undercard as a non-title defense rather than one of Eubank Jr’s title defenses of his interim WBA title.
“As for the Golovkin talk, it’s hilarious. I’d be surprised if he fights Spike O’Sullivan in December, let alone Golovkin. I think they’re worried about O’Sullivan, so you can imagine what they truly think of a fight with Golovkin,” Blackwell said.
Eubank Jr was beaten by Billy Joe Saunders last November, and he still hasn’t avenged that loss.
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