By Scott Gilfoid: If you want to look any one area in Chris Eubank Jr’s game that will limit his chances of success against unbeaten IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs), it’s his lack of power. Eubank Jr. simply does not punch hard enough for him to keep a knockout artist like GGG off of him.
Without Eubank Jr. having enough pop in his punches to gain the respect of Golovkin, it means he’s going to be getting hit an awful lot by the Kazakhstan fighter for as long as their fight lasts. It’s hard for me to understand why Eubank Jr. can’t punch. I don’t know why. I just know that he lacks the spark that you like to see from a fighter when it comes to the power department. Eubank Jr. is more of a high volume type of guy than a puncher.
Yeah, Eubank Jr. has a lot of KOs on his record, but he’s faced largely horrible opposition during his career. When you take away the fodder opposition that Eubank Jr. has padded his record with, you are left with an 0-1 record. That’s not too good, is it?
The match between Golovkin and Eubank Jr. is expected to be finalized this week for a September fight in the UK. Eubank Jr’s promoter Eddie Hearn is working on the deal with Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler of K2 Promotions.
In Eubank Jr’s last two fights against Tom Doran and Nick Blackwell, both domestic level fighters, Eubank Jr. had to hit them a lot before he was able to hurt them and eventually score knockouts. Blackwell lasted until the 10th round, and he was standing directly in front of Eubank Jr. the entire fight looking to punch with him. Blackwell took everything that Eubank Jr. threw at him and yet he was still standing there until the 10th. Had that been GGG in the ring with Blackwell, I don’t think he would have been able to make it to the 3rd round unless he was carried by the Kazakhstan fighter in order to give the fans more of a show.
I’m not sure why Eubank Jr. can’t punch. His dad, Chris Eubank Sr, had excellent punching power, and that was one of the things that made him so good. But for some reason, the power didn’t get passed down to Eubank Jr., because he isn’t a puncher at all.
I rate Eubank Jr’s power as less than Golovkin’s last opponent Dominic Wade. Golovkin destroyed Wade in just two rounds, which is pretty much how long I see Eubank Jr. lasting against him. That’s not a knock on Eubank Jr. that he doesn’t have Wade’s punching power. Wade is a pretty decent puncher, so I wouldn’t expect someone to have his kind of power. I see Eubank Jr’s power as being a notch below Wade. Eubank Jr. has the kind of power where he needs to be able to hit his opponents many times before he can get a knockout. Eubank Jr. basically needs a guy that can’t move, can’t punch, and just stands there and lets him tee off.
I don’t see Eubank Jr. ever developing any power in his career. Eubank Jr. is 26 now, and by his age, he’s probably as powerful as he’ll ever be. If the power isn’t there right now, then it’s safe to say that it will never be there. I don’t know why Eubank Jr. can’t punch. Some guys are born with power and other guys aren’t. Not everyone can be incredibly powerful like Triple G. I mean, if Eubank Jr. had Golovkin’s punching power, his ring record would likely be 24-0, with 24 knockouts rather than 23-1, with 18 knockouts. Eubank Jr. has generally poor to mediocre opposition through much of his career.
The only decent guy Eubank Jr. has faced in his career is Billy Joe Saunders in 2014, and he lost to him by a 12 round decision. If Eubank Jr. was a big puncher like Golovkin, he would have likely made easy work of Saunders and knocked him out. Instead, Eubank Jr. was out-boxed, outworked and outclassed by the highly intelligent Saunders. Eubank Jr. didn’t have the hand speed or the ring IQ that Saunders had going for him, and that’s pretty much why he lost the fight to him. If Eubank Jr. had the punching power of GGG, he would have been able to overcome all Saunders’ built in advantages to defeat him.
If Eubank Jr. was blinding fast in terms of hand speed, and if he has fast feet, his lack of power wouldn’t be such a limiting factor for him. Look at Floyd Mayweather Jr; he was never a big puncher, but he still won all of his fights due to his hand speed, quick cat-like reflexes and fast feet. Mayweather had tools that made up for his lack of power.
Unfortunately, Eubank Jr. doesn’t have great hand speed, fast feet of cat-like reflexes. He’s kind of robotic with his upper body, not fast, and not a mobile guy. Eubank Jr. doesn’t have the lightning reflexes that keeps him from getting nailed by shots from his opposition. In other words, Eubank Jr. is not Mayweather and he never will be. Eubank Jr. is the type of fighter who wins by throwing a massive amount of punches., He uses the shotgun approach to his fights by throwing a ton of punches that lead to him eventually getting a knockout.
As I mentioned previously, Eubank Jr. needs a stationary guy that stands in front of him for him to land his many shots. Eubank Jr. also needs a fighter that doesn’t have tremendous punching power like Golovkin does, because it’s just too dangerous to try and deliver a lot of shots when you’re getting whacked incredibly hard to the head and body. That’s the bind that Eubank Jr. is in as he heads towards a fight against Golovkin.
For Eubank Jr. to have a chance of winning, he needs Golovkin to stand still for him so he can use his high volume punch attack. But that’s still not enough for Eubank Jr. to win against GGG. He also needs Golovkin not to throw his sledgehammer shots at him, because if he does, he’ll get knocked out. So, Eubank Jr. needs Golovkin to not only stand in front of him for 12 rounds, but he also needs him not to throw shots. Will that happen. Nope. Golovkin is going to be braining Eubank Jr. with hard punches from the 1st round, and I see this turning into a real massacre early on with Eubank Jr. getting routed.