By Scott Gilfoid: As I predicted, #1 WBA Chris Eubank Jr. (21-1, 16 KOs) easily beat fellow countryman/fringe contender Gary “Spike” O’Sullivan (22-2, 15 KOs) in stopping him in the 7th round after O’Sullivan quit after the 7th round in their WBA middleweight title eliminator at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
O’Sullivan appeared to stagger Eubank Jr. a couple of times in the first two rounds, but after that it was all one-way traffic with Eubank Jr. teeing off on O’Sullivan with everything but the kitchen sink.
Despite winning the against the badly over-matched O’Sullivan, Eubank Jr. looked vulnerable the entire time. He had his mouth wide open, he looked tired, and was incredibly sloppy. Eubank Jr. reminded me of an untrained, undisciplined version of James DeGale. He made DeGale look great in comparison.
It was a horrible mismatch and it seems obvious why Eubank Jr’s promoter Eddie Hearn selected the punching bag O’Sullivan instead of a good contender to fight like Tureano Johnson.
“I want anyone that wants a title,” Eubank Jr. said after the fight.
O’Sullivan looked like he trained just hard enough to fight for a full three minutes for three rounds. After the third round, O’Sullivan stopped throwing punches almost entirely, and just took head shots. It was pretty shocking to see a top level fighter looking so tired and doing absolutely nothing after just three rounds. What was really sad is that the World Boxing Association had O’Sullivan ranked #5 with their organization. If you take a look at the WBA’s top 15 rankings, you’ll notice that the WBA had O’Sullivan ranked above these talented contenders: 6. Arif Magomedov, 7. Antoine Douglas, 9. Dominic Wade, 10. Willie Monroe Jr, Peter Quillin and 12. Ryota Murata. I don’t think for a second that O’Sullivan could beat any of those guys, and that’s why it was pretty amusing how the WBA made the Eubank Jr. vs. O’Sullivan fight an eliminator bout rather than having it as just a normal fight, because I don’t think O’Sullivan was nearly good enough to be fighting in an eliminator.
With this victory, Eubank Jr. is now the mandatory challenger to WBA “regular” middleweight champion Daniel Jacobs. That’s a bad match-up for Eubank Jr., because Jacobs is a lot faster, more accurate and a better puncher than Eubank Jr. in my estimation. If I’m Eddie Hearn, I would tell Eubank Jr. not to take the Jacobs fight because he’ll get destroyed by the talented American. It would be better to save Eubank Jr. for a future fight against Gennady Golovkin rather than putting him in with Jacobs and then watching poor Eubank Jr. blown out in one or two rounds.
After this fight, I think it’s now incredibly laughable to even consider putting Eubank Jr in the ring with Golovkin. It wouldn’t be fair to Eubank Jr. to have that fight put together, because he’s not in the same solar system as Golovkin in terms of talent. Hearn needs to marinate the Eubank Jr. vs. Golovkin fight until it’s time to cash out with that fight. Until then, Hearn needs to keep matching Eubank Jr. against easy marks like O’Sullivan, because he cannot afford to put him in with anyone remotely good like Jacobs or Tureano Johnson.
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