By Scott Gilfoid: In a very, very unusual move, Sauerland Events promoter Kalle Sauerland will have former three-time world title challenger loser George Groves (21-3, 16 KOs) facing 2nd tier fighter Andrea Di Luisa (18-3, 14 KOs) next month in a scheduled 10 round fight at the Copper Box Arena in London, UK.

It’s such a strange move because the opponent is such a soft one for a fighter ranked as high as the 27-year-old Groves, who is ranked #3 by the WBC.

The 33-year-old Di Luisa is the type of fighter that you would normally think would be ideal for someone coming off of a long 1 to 2-year layoff, like former IBF 168lb champion Lucian Bute was when he fought the Italian Di Luisa last August and destroyed him in 4 easy rounds. But for Groves, he’s kept himself busy by fighting on a regular basis lately.

Granted, Groves hasn’t been getting the best results when he’s been fighting, as he’s coming off of a 12 round split decision loss to WBC super middleweight champion Badou Jack last September in Las Vegas, Nevada, and he was also twice knocked out by former world champion Carl Froch. But that’s no reason for Sauerland to jam Groves into reverse gear career-wise and start putting him in with fodder opposition like Di Luisa.

It makes no sense. But it kind of reminds me how Sauerland recently matched the 31-year-old British heavyweight Dereck Chisora against the weak opponent Peter Erdos (9-9-4, 3 Kos) last Saturday night in a Hamburg, Germany card. Sauerland recently signed Chisora. But a fighter with the kind of experience that Chisora has doesn’t need to be put in with a fodder opponent like Erdos at this point in his career.

The same with Groves being matched against Di Luisa. This is like taking an engineer and putting him back into a remedial physics course because one of his engineering projects didn’t work out.

It seems like Groves is going to be looking to get a rematch against Badou Jack at some point. None of the other sanctioning bodies has Groves ranked in their top 15 other than the World Boxing Council.

I’m not sure it’s the wisest move for Groves to be targeting Badou Jack again, because he was already exposed by the talented American last September in getting dropped in the 1st round of the contest with a head shot and worn down by body shots in the 2nd half of the fight. Badou won the fight by the scores of 115-112, 116-111 for Badou, and 114-113 for Groves. I had Badou winning by the scores of 116-111.

Instead of facing guys with chin problems like Di Luisa, Groves needs to be matched against fighters that can extend him the entire 10 to 12 rounds of his fights, because it seems to me that Groves has stamina issues that needs to be addressed. For some fighters it doesn’t really matter how hard you try and develop their stamina by having them fight longer fights, they continually have issues gassing out in their fights.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hiw7EACM0U

You at least have to try and improve their cardiovascular issues. Besides Groves issues in gassing out in fights, he also appears to have a chin problem. That’s obviously something you can’t do a heck of a lot to change. You can either take a punch or not, but you can improve a fighter’s defense. That’s an area I think Groves needs a lot of improvement on because as we saw in his loss to Badou Jack, he’s just too easy to hit with solid shots.

Di Luisa bounced back from his defeat to Lucian Bute to defeat little known Gabor Zsalek by a 2nd round knockout in Italy. It was nice that Di Luisa was able to pick up a win after the way he was crushed by Bute, but it’s not as if he fought anyone good to get that win. Di Luisa does have some pop in his punches, and he should probably focus on going after Groves’ chin early in this fight if he wants to have a chance of winning. He can’t afford to let Groves get a full head of a steam because he’ll wind up getting knocked out by him like he was by Bute last August.

CONFIRMED: @StGeorgeGroves will face Andrea Di Luisa (18-3 (14KOs)) on Jan 30 at the Copper Box #SaintGG 👊🇬🇧

— Kalle+NisseSauerland (@SauerlandBros) December 8, 2015

Also on the Groves vs. Di Luisa care are the following fights:

John Ryder vs. Sergey Khomitsky
vacant WBA International middleweight title
John Wayne Hibbert vs. Tommy Martin