Groves v Eubank fight will be a compelling spectacle
Perhaps no one country has been as closely associated with one weight class as Britain has been with the super-middleweights. The 168lb division was in its infancy in 1993 when Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn’s savage rivalry peaked with a world title unification rematch in front of 13 million television viewers and a soccer stadium audience in Manchester.
Four years later, Eubank passed the torch to Joe Calzaghe, who would retire undefeated as arguably the best supermiddle in history.
Carl Froch took over where Calzaghe left off, fighting all-comers and then finding a bit of box office magic in his rivalry with George Groves. Their rematch was every bit as big as Eubank and Benn’s, playing out in front of 80,000 people at Wembley Stadium.
Froch hung up his gloves after his iconic KO of Groves, who has since picked up the WBA belt Froch used to hold. And this weekend, in a wonderful piece of nonfiction script, Groves will fight none other than Chris Eubank — Junior, that is.
Eubank Jr was born and raised amid his father’s peak and pomp, and has inherited every drop of Senior’s swagger — and not a small amount of his talent, too.
He would have been a star on name value alone, but Eubank Jr has the speed and power to make him must-see TV, and the irresistible blend of charisma and controversy that courts the casual fan. Love him or hate him, they all pay to watch him.
Groves is his perfect foil; a straightforward, industrious type who largely earned his success through grit and perseverance — he won a world title at the fourth attempt — and without what he would say was a headstart in the shape of a famous father.
Groves lacks Benn’s ferocity, but in his everyman appeal he very much plays Benn’s role against the flamboyant and divisive Eubank – and the UK public has bought into the rivalry, which comes to a head on Saturday night (early Sunday morning, Thai time) at the Manchester Arena, home to so many great British boxing nights.
The match is part of the groundbreaking and critically acclaimed World Boxing Super Series (WBSS) tournament, but as soon as the brackets were announced, Groves and Eubank as a potential semifinal overshadowed every other potential and actual pairing.
Both did their part by winning separate quarter-finals impressively, and the winner will meet either Juergen Braehmer or another countryman in Callum Smith when they contest the final. But even with that final on the horizon, Groves v Eubank is very much “the big one”. Who comes next is almost an afterthought.
British fans will hope that will be Smith, so they get another domestic dust-up for both the WBSS trophy and the WBA world title belt — and yet another chapter in their nation’s thrilling supermiddleweight story.