George Groves vs Chris Eubank Jr: A fight built on boxing's dark undertones and one that appeals to the purists

This is a fight that could be slipped with style into any decade, especially Chris Eubank Sr’s epoch, because it appeals to the purists and curious

The two men go head to head in Manchester this Saturday (Getty)

The George Groves and Chris Eubank Jr prizefight on Saturday in Manchester has the right amount of conviction, delusion and shared history to make it a great fight.

It is big enough to rise above the two baubles on offer and the smart World Boxing Super Series branding will be pretty furniture once the light show has faded, the ring has emptied and the first bell chimes for what will be the semi-final of this seminal event.

Eubank Jr has just the one defeat in 27 fights - an odd loss over 12 rounds to Billy Joe Saunders in 2014 - and Groves has been left broken and raging three times in world title fights. Groves is one of the angriest losers I have ever met, not a bad loser, just an angry man in defeat.

Groves holds the WBA title, Eubank Jr the IBO equivalent at super-middle and in the WBSS they each had savage knockout wins in the quarter finals. Their meeting on Saturday, planned in many ways in Monaco last July when the WBSS was launched on a glittering night and the draw was made, is an old-fashioned British scrap; the public love it, they bought 20,000 tickets in minutes and the pantomime has been in full glorious swing since October. The ringmaster has been Eubank Sr with his winkle-picker boots and quotes sprinkled with enough gold dust to amaze, infuriate and confuse.

The pair do not like each other and disagree on the interpretation of a few ancient sparring sessions. Groves, in his defence, is not a great sparrer and often finishes that segment of his training camp with bruises. Eubank Jr, like his father, is a sensational and nasty sparrer, believing that the men he hires should take the beating he hired them for. The sport of boxing might be at the very heart of many new keep-fit trends but there is a truly dark side to the business in the private camps men like Groves and Eubank Jr keep.

In many ways they have each retreated, like all great fighters before them, to their secret gyms to prepare by hurting as many paid sparring partners as possible. There is a reason sparring sessions behind closed doors remain one of the sport’s lasting and honoured rituals. It is not often pleasant to glimpse the harsh methods our ring heroes use to retain their edge; Lennox Lewis was a butcher in his sparring sessions, his paid hands piled high like battle debris after his fists had done their damage.

Groves is not a good sparrer, but he is top fighter in the big ring (Getty)

It is too easy to be fooled by talk, looks and the loose belief that the other has cut corners. “People want to see me as some type of lucky fighter, a man who has never been tested, never been hit on the chin,” Eubank Jr said last week at his Hove gym, the same dirty retreat his father used two decades ago. Too many people consider him some type of boxing-actor, in a fortunate place only because of his father’s name and just a brutal fight away from exposure. It is a convenient deception, one that many in the old boxing business disgracefully applied to his father at the start of the Nineties.

Groves, on the other hand, has not quite escaped his nearly-man tag, famous for getting knocked out in front of 80,000 at Wembley by Carl Froch. “This is my time, he knows what I can do,” Groves warned, a gentle reference to their sparring sessions all those years ago. “I was a kid, dealing with him and I beat him up and down the ring,” said Eubank Jr. “I know his weaknesses and he knows I know.” The eyewitness accounts, assuming 50-percent of the so-called witnesses were not even there, seem to favour Eubank’s version of events. As I said, Groves is not a good sparrer, but he is top fighter in the big ring.


 Eubank Jr has just the one defeat in 27 fights - an odd loss over 12 rounds to Billy Joe Saunders in 2014 
 (Getty)

“Everybody thinks they can just walk through George Groves,” said Shane McGuigan, the third man to take control of Groves. “They have to be smart, they have to set traps, they need to be tough to body and head. The defeats made him the fighter he is today.” Groves is seasoned, hardened, naturally bigger and not yet a veteran. He also has a few things to prove in a fight that could be slipped with style into any decade, especially Eubank Sr’s epoch, because it appeals to the purists and curious.