By Charles Brun: BOXXER promoter Ben Shalom hopes to set up a fight between Chris Eubank Jr. and IBF middleweight champion Gennadiy Golovkin in May 2022.
Shalom has already begun talks with the team of the 39-year-old Golovkin (41-1-1, 36 KOs) for a fight with Eubank Jr. 31-2, 23 KOs) in the first quarter of next year.
Golovkin has a business-level fight against WBA middleweight champion Ryota Murata to get out of the way in December, and after that, he should be free to fight Eubank Jr. in 2o22.
Before that fight happens, Shalom is trying to set up a match between Eubank Jr. and former middleweight world title challenger Liam Williams for December.
Liam Williams coming off a loss to Andrade
Williams (23-3-1, 18 KOs) is ranked #6 WBA, #6 WBC, #7 WBO and coming off a competitive but rather one-sided 12 round unanimous decision defeat against WBO 160-lb champion Demetrius Andrade earlier this year on April 17 in Hollywood, Florida.
The 29-year-old Williams’ recent defeat against Andrade doesn’t exactly make him the ideal opponent for the 32-year-old Eubank Jr. to be fighting right now. Still, the contest would interest British boxing fans familiar with Liam.
Eubank Jr. needs fights against world-class opposition, and Williams serves the purpose on that front. After being out of the ring for all of 2020, Eubank Jr. came back and has beaten two second-tier fighters in Marcus Morrison and Wanik Awdijan.
The middleweight division is shockingly bad right now, and Williams, believe it or not, is considered one of the better fighters in the weight class.
Eubank Jr. didn’t perform well against Morrison earlier this year in May, struggling at times to best the heavy-handed fighter and looking nowhere near the fighter he was five years ago.
It’s difficult to miss how Eubank Jr. has slowed down from the fighter he was earlier in his career, but perhaps his new trainer Roy Jones Jr. can bring him slowly back to what he once was.
Eubank Jr. targeting Saunders rematch
“We will be making an offer to Liam, so we’ll see if he wants it. Hopefully, we can get it on in December,” said BOXXER promoter Ben Shalom to Sky Sports about a match between Eubank Jr. and former 160-lb world title challenger Liam Williams.
“There are huge fights out there for Eubank Jr, like Billy Joe Saunders and Demetrius Andrade,” said Shalom. “He wants to avenge the Billy Joe defeat.”
It’s unclear whether a fight between Eubank Jr. and former two-division world champion Saunders can be negotiated. Eubank Jr. lost to Saunders by a 12 round split decision in November 2014 in a fight that he would have won if he had fought hard in the first half of the contest.
It looked like Eubank Jr. was trying to imitate how his famous dad Chris Eubank Sr. used to fight by doing a lot of posing after throwing single shots.
By the time Eubank Jr. stopped doing all ridiculous posing, he was so far behind in the fight that he needed a knockout to win.
The 32-year-old Billy Joe (30-1, 14 KOs) is coming off an eighth round stoppage loss to superstar Canelo Alvarez on May 8, a fight in which Saunders suffered a fractured right orbital bone.
Saunders reportedly wants $5 million for the fight with Eubank Jr, making it difficult to put this match together.
Eubank Jr. isn’t a world champion, and he hasn’t fought nearly enough to keep his popularity up over the last five years.
If Billy Joe chooses to dig in his heels and insist on getting five million, Eubank Jr. might need to go in a different direction.
Talks have begun for Golovkin fight
“Talks have started. Contact has been made with Golovkin’s team, and talks are progressing. They want the fight with Eubank Jr, and we’re looking at a May date,” said Shalom. “But the Golovkin fight is the huge one for his legacy.
Golovkin will be turning 40 next April, and he’s done very little with his career in the last three years since losing to Canelo by a 12 round majority decision in their rematch on September 15, 2018.
Since that defeat, Golovkin has fought only three times, beating Steve Rolls, Sergiy Derevyanchenko, and Kamil Szeremeta. Rolls and Szeremeta were mismatches that the boxing public had very little interest in seeing.
The perception that many fans have about Golovkin is that he’s jaded and bitter over his loss to Canelo in 2018 and just looking for either easy payday fights or hoping for the Mexican star to give him a trilogy match.
Whatever chance Golovkin had of getting a third fight with Canelo, he’s thrown it out the door by facing weak opposition and fighting infrequently. It’s disappointing how Golovkin has wasted the last three years of his career by not often fighting and doing the minimum by facing poor opposition.