Using a high volume attack, George Groves (20-2, 15 KOs) beat EBU super middleweight champion Christopher Rebrasse (22-3-3, 6 KOs) by a 12 round unanimous decision on Saturday night to put himself in as the WBC mandatory challenger at the Wembley Arena in London, UK.
Groves is now the mandatory to WBC super middleweight champion Anthony Dirrell. Groves constantly attacked Rebrasse throughout the fight, throwing punch after punch in hopes of scoring a knockout.
When the KO failed to happen, Groves had to slow down some to pace himself because he was burning out badly by the 8th round. It was lucky for him that Rebrasse had zero power for as tired as Groves was, he would have likely been knocked out.
Groves emptied out his entire arsenal tonight in trying to score the knockout, but Rebrasse showed a good chin and he kept coming forward looking to exchange. When would stop punching or try to the move to the outside, Rebrasse would motion for him to come forward to exchange. Groves willingly obliged each time.
After the fight, Groves told Froch that he wants to fight him for a third time next year. “You beat me, Carl, but I still think I’m better than you. I’ve love to have another crack next year.”
Froch didn’t sound to excited about fighting Groves for a third time. Froch said he couldn’t get excited about fighting a guy he already beat twice. He also said he wasn’t excited about fighting anyone from the UK at this point.
“We want him [Dirrell] as soon as possible. He’s very disrespectful,” Groves said about Anthony Dirrell. “I don’t think Dirrell will stand up to my shots. He says he doesn’t want to come to the UK. We’ll make him.”
Groves didn’t look good in taking a lot of the weak shots from Rebrasse tonight, especially in the 2nd half of the fight when Groves had faded. It’s to imagine Groves being able to stand up to the hard punches from Dirrell if he’d been in the ring with him tonight instead of the non-punching Rebrasse.
The final scores were 118-110, 117-111, 118-110.
Other boxing action on the card:
Luke Campbell TKO 7 Krzysztof Szot
Khalid Yafai KO 2 Herald Molina
Oscar Ahlin TKO 6 Olegs Fedotovs
Gamal Yafai pts 6 Sofiane Bellahcene
Martin Joseph Ward TKO 8 Kakhaber Avetisian
Luke Watkins TKO 4 David Vicena
Ricky Boylan pts 4 Karoly Lakatos
