By Scott Gilfoid: #1 WBA Chris Eubank Jr. (20-1, 15 KOs) will be looking to put himself into position for a world title shot against WBA “regular” middleweight champion Daniel Jacobs this Saturday in his WBA 160lb title eliminator against #6 WBA Gary “Spike” O’Sullivan (22-1, 15 KOs) at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
Both fighters are predicting knockout in this fight, but the closer reality is that the fight will most likely go to the cards. The guys that O’Sullivan and Eubank Jr. have been knocking out thus far have been the weak variety of fighters, so it’s not surprising that they’re scoring KOs.
Neither guy has the kind of Gennady Golovkin type punching power or talent to just go out and mow down the better opposition in the middleweight division.
Eubank Jr. has said repeatedly that he’s not bothered by the comments that O’Sullivan has made in the build up to this fight, but it’s pretty clear that he’s very, very bothered by what Spike has said to him.
“He [O’Sullivan] has dug himself a very deep hole and he’s not going to be able to get out of it,” Eubank Jr. said to skysports.com. “He is not the man to beat me. He’s one-dimensional and he’s not got enough in his armor to beat me.”
I agree with Eubank Jr. about O’Sullivan being the one to beat him. I see O’Sullivan as a bottom dweller or 2nd tier guy. The World Boxing Association recently gave O’Sullivan a huge push up in the rankings to the No.6 spot with them. I think O’Sullivan should be at No.15 rather than No.6, because he looks like nothing special to me.
The fighter that will likely be the one to beat Eubank Jr. is Daniel Jacobs. That’s not a good match-up for Eubank Jr., because Jacobs has better hand speed, punching power and accuracy. I can see that fight ending very quickly with Jacobs catching Eubank Jr. with a big shot and then taking him out with a flurry of punches in the same manner that he did with Peter Quillin recently with his quick 1st round knockout.
What will ultimately hurt Eubank Jr. against Jacobs is Eubank Jr’s bad habit of trying to pose after he throws a punch or moves around the ring. Eubank Jr. likes to imitate his elderly father Chris Eubank Sr with the way he used to fight 20 years ago. The thing is Eubank Sr. wouldn’t be able to fight at the upper levels of the middleweight division nowadays if he was still young, because he had too many bad habits with his posing after throwing punches.
As soon as Eubank Sr. tried to pose against Golovkin, he’d get his head taken off. You can’t play that posing garbage against the 21st century fighters because they won’t hesitate to take your head off. That’s why I see Eubank Jr. as more of a very, very flawed domestic level fighter who doesn’t belong in the ring with guys like Jacobs and Golovkin. Eubank Jr. can do the posing stuff against guys like O’Sullivan because he doesn’t have the talent to make him pay for his bad habits, but the good fighters like Jacobs and Golovkin would.
I think Eubank Jr. needs to get a good trainer after the O’Sullivan fight that can take all that posing garbage out of his game, because there’s no way that Eubank Jr. won’t be able to beat the top level fighters messing around with that kind of show business trash. If Eubank Jr. wants to pose, then he needs to get up on the catwalk outside of the ring, because that garbage won’t fly against the true top tier middleweights. Sorry, I don’t see O’Sullivan as true top tier. To me, he’s just some guy that the WBA gave an elevated ranking based on his fluff wins.
“The gravity of the situation he is in has slowly begun to dawn on him in the build-up. He is going to step into the ring with me; the pressure has got to him,” Eubank Jr. said about O’Sullivan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUz7aQqWZzA
Eubank Jr. definitely has a huge advantage over O’Sullivan in terms of talent, but that doesn’t mean anything because he’s not fighting a good fighter. The WBA is making it super easy for Eubank Jr. to earn a title shot against Jacobs by letting him fight an easy mark instead of insisting that he fights a talent like Tureano Johnson, Willie Monroe Jr., Quillin, Arif Magomedov, Antoine Douglas or Dominic Wade.
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