By William Mackay: British and Commonwealth super middleweight champion George Groves (13-0, 10 KO’s) has already tipped his hand for his next fight against Paul Smith (31-2, 17 KO’s) for the kinds of style options Groves has to win this November 5th fight.

In the past, he’s generally been a straight ahead slugger who includes a lot of feints. However, in his fight against James DeGale last May, Groves used a new hit and run style of fighting that was very similar to the style used by IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute.

It took DeGale by complete surprise and because he took at least five rounds to finally figure out how to defeat the style, Groves was able to win a close 12 round decision. Like my colleague Scott Gilfoid, I felt that DeGale should have been given the decision in the fight. DeGale was able to force Groves fight fight from the 5th round on by chasing him down and getting the better of him during exchanges. Now it’s Smith’s turn.

I don’t know that Groves will try and hit and run like he did in the DeGale fight, but you have to figure that he’ll at least try it out early to see if he can put Smith off balance with it. If Groves is successful with this style, you can count on him using it for the remainder of the fight.

If Smith has his number for this style, we could see Groves reverting back to his old slugging style, which I don’t think will work against the harder hitting Smith. I think that might be the worse thing Groves can. But Groves may have to come up with a third plan, a Plan C to use if hitting and running and slugging don’t work.

Groves isn’t much of an inside fighter, so I can’t see him doing that. Smith hits too hard in close and seems to have one punch power from short range. If Groves tries that one out if could be bad for him.