By Jeff Aronow: Chris Eubank Jr has signed with the German promotional company Sauerland, according to the BILD. This move for the interim WBA middleweight champion Eubank Jr (29-2, 22 KOs) comes after he’d signed with Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) in 2019, and fought twice for them.

Eubank Jr, 31, hasn’t fought in 13 months since his second-round knockout win over Matt Korobov in December 2019. The pandemic got in the way of Eubank’s career, as did many other fighters.

Before the pandemic, Eubank’s career looked to be moving in the right direction. Unfortunately, a bit of bad luck has slowed things down for him.

Winning the WBA title could help Eubank Jr

Eubank Jr is in an excellent position to snatch the WBA ‘regular’ middleweight title now that Canelo Alvarez has vacated the WBA Super World 160-lb title after moving up to 168.

Grabbing the WBA title will help Eubank Jr potentially use the title as leverage to get the other champions at 160 to face him.

At the very least, having a world title will give Eubank Jr more clout with the networks, most notably DAZN. If that streaming giant moves into Germany, Eubank Jr’s fights will be shown on that platform.

Ryota Murata will be the new Super World champion with the World Boxing Association, and that will free up his WBA secondary strap.

The WBA is one of the sanctioning bodies that have two world champions in their weight classes. The WBC is another one with its Franchise and regular champions.

Eubank Jr is obviously known to the German boxing fans for his wins over Arthur Abraham and Avni Yildirim in 2017.

It’s an unusual move for Eubank Jr to sign with a German promotional company rather than one of the UK promoters like Matchroom Boxing or Queensbury. Eubank Jr is from the UK, and that’s where most of his fans are located.

Could it be that Eubank Jr is bent out of shape about losing out on the fight with Gennadiy Golovkin in 2016? Back then, Eubank Jr was in negotiations for a fight against GGG in London, and Hearn was his promoter.

When the negotiations reached a stall, Hearn offered the fight to welterweight Kell Brook, and Eubank Jr lost out on a nice payday. In hindsight, it hurt Brook and didn’t help Hearn, as Kell suffered an eye injury. Brook’s eye injury subsequently derailed his career was never the same.

Eubank Jr is now training by Roy Jones Jr, who has been working on refining his game. It’s unclear whether Eubank has improved, though because he’s been inactive since 2019.

Eubank Jr has options available to him

If Sauerland is able to work with Matchroom and Golden Boy Promotions, Eubank Jr could potentially take on these excellent fighters:

Canelo Alvarez
Gennadiy Golovkin
Demetrius Andrade
Jaime Munguia

Eubank Jr has fought at 168 in the past, and he’s someone that has the talent to take on bigger fighters. His defeats came against Billy Joe Saunders and George Groves.

In looking back at Eubank’s 12 round split decision loss to Saunders in 2014, he could have won that fight. If Eubank Jr had let his hands go more in the first six rounds, he would have won a wide decision.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FptdFBygWUE

Eubank was doing a lot of posing after throwing single punches, and that style led to Saunders building up a big lead in the first six rounds.

When Eubank Jr stopped playing around, he dominated Saunders in the second half of the fight, showing that he was the far better talent.

If those two were to fight now, you’d have to give Eubank Jr a great chance of beating Saunders, who has slowed down due to age and inactivity. Putting together a fight between them could prove to be difficult, though.