By Scott Gilfoid: After his 7th round stoppage win over #5 WBA Gary “Spike” O’Sullivan (22-2, 15 KOs) last Saturday night in their WBA 160lb title eliminator, #1 WBA Chris Eubank Jr. (21-1, 16 KOs) says he’s ready to fight WBA “regular” middleweight champion Daniel Jacobs (31-1, 28 KOs) for his title in 2016.
Eubank Jr feels that a win over O’Sullivan means that he can face Jacobs and KO him. I’m not sure why Eubank Jr thinks that beating O’Sullivan means that he’ll be able to KO a talent like Jacobs, but he’s got it worked out in his head to mean that.
“I’m ready to fight for a world title; whether it’s against him [Jacobs] or whether it’s against the winner of Saunders-Lee. It doesn’t matter to me,” Eubank Jr. said at the post-fight press conference last Saturday night.
“I think I could [knockout Jacobs],” Eubank Jr. said to secondsout. “I think I can stop anyone in the division with the right game plan. Nobody is unbeatable.”
It would be easier for me to take Eubank Jr. seriously as a live opponent for Jacobs if he looked good in beating O’Sullivan, but he didn’t. Eubank Jr. was hurt several times by O’Sullivan in the first three rounds, and he looked really tired from the fast pace that he was setting. Eubank Jr’s mouth was wide open during the first four rounds of the contest.
I think he would have been knocked out if O’Sullivan didn’t stop throwing punches. O’Sullivan got tired himself and stopped letting his hands go. It’s too bad for him that he did, because he was clearly hurting Eubank J. when he was connecting with anything. It didn’t what O’Sullivan threw; he was hurting him with everything.
Now could you imagine what it would be like if it was Daniel Jacobs in the ring with Eubank Jr rather than a flawed punching bag like O’Sullivan. I think it would be replay of Jacobs’ recent 1st round knockout win over Peter Quillin that took place earlier this month on December 5th. I think Jacobs would hurt Eubank Jr with the first right hand he threw, and then he’d flurry on him to get him out of there quickly.
“There are a few options. He’s [Jacobs] the champion and he is from Brooklyn, so flying over to America is an option,” Eubank Jr. said via skysports.com.” Being a Brit, I always love to fight in England, so if we can get the fight over here that would be great,” Eubank Jr said.
I think it’s extremely doubtful that Eubank Jr will be able to get be able to get Jacobs to agree to come over to the UK to fight in front of Eubank Jr’s loud British fans. I could be wrong about that, but I just don’t see Jacobs’s adviser Al Haymon being too keen on the idea of having his fighter Jacobs fighting in front of a loud group of Eubank Jr supporters.
As the WBA champion, Jacobs shouldn’t have to come to the UK to defend his title in a hostile environment. I know that some other visiting champions have had to travel to the UK to defend their titles, but I don’t think Jacobs is going to be one of them. I think Eubank Jr should plan on packing his bags to travel to the U.S to fight Jacobs if he wants to fight for the WBA title badly enough. If not, then Eubank Jr needs to step aside so that other top contenders like Alfonso Blanco, Dmitry Chudinov or Tureano Johnson.
“There’s a lot of politics, but the fight will happen within the next year or six months,” Eubank Jr said. “That is my dream, to become a world middleweight champion and Jacobs is the man they are going to put in front of me and he’s not going to get in my way. Speed kills. It doesn’t matter how much power you have, people spoke about how powerful this guy was leading up to the fight. If you’re throwing these big power shots, but I am throwing three or four shots before you can get your one off there’s no way you can beat me.”
I think Eubank Jr. needs to sit down and look at some of Jacobs’ fights because he’s actually faster than Eubank Jr in terms of hand speed, and the much better puncher and clearly the more skilled fighter of the two.
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