Chris Eubank Jr. suffers injury, vacates British title

By Boxing News - 09/17/2016 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: Chris Eubank Jr. has reportedly vacated his British middleweight title and pulled out of his scheduled October 22nd defense against challenge Tommy Langford due to an elbow injury he sustained during a sparring session. I don’t know if you can call this a disappointment that the 26-year-old Eubank Jr. (23-1, 18 KOs) has pulled out of the Langford fight.

“Gutted” was Eubank Jr’s response on Twitter to his injury and his subsequent vacating of his British title. Eubank Jr’s father Chris Eubank responded to the news, saying “Chris Eubank Jr’s British middleweight Championship was officially relinquished yesterday due to injury.”

Well, this is good news for boxing fans, because maybe Eubank Jr. will now step it up on the world stage and start taking on some talented top fighters like Gennady “GGG” Golovkin, Tureno Johnson, Daniel Jacobs or the winner of the Willie Monroe Jr. vs. Gabriel Rosado fight. At least the fans can see whether Eubank Jr. has the ability to fight at the world level or not. We would have learned nothing from Eubank Jr. beating Langford if he had taken that fight on October 22nd as planned.

I don’t understand Eubank Jr’s problem when it comes to stepping it. Ever since Eubank Jr. was beaten by Billy Joe Saunders two years ago in 2014, he’s pulled back from fighting the talented middleweights and has been taking it easy.

I’m just wondering if that loss seemed to affect Eubank Jr’s self-confidence or something. He should have snapped out of it by now an stepped it up again. At least if Eubank Jr. fought someone good and was whipped, he’d know that he doesn’t have the ability to fight at the world stage. He would then move onto whatever he wanted to do with his career, be it fighting at the domestic level or retiring from boxing.

The Eubank Jr. vs. Langford fight wasn’t one that had attracted a great deal of interest on the world stage from boxing fans. It’s kind of interesting that Eubank Jr. has not only pulled out of the fight, but also vacated his British title, because it seemed like he valued the strap.

Honestly, it didn’t make much sense for Eubank Jr. to be bothering with the British title to begin with, considering that he could have gotten a huge payday of millions if he had fought IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin last Saturday night. It must have been hard for Eubank Jr. to see Kell Brook getting the fight and the millions that he could have received had he signed the contract to fight Triple G. The money that Eubank Jr. would have received in the Langford fight was said to be quite low compared to the millions he would have received against Golovkin.