By Michael Collins: British super middleweight champion George Groves (14-0, 11 KOs) expressed interest recently in trying to get a fight against former WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (28-2, 20 KO’s) next year in 2013 after Groves picks up a little bit more of experience under his belt.
Froch hasn’t said a work about Groves’ interest and it’s seems painfully obvious that Froch isn’t interested in being used as a stepping stone for a fighter that few people outside of the UK have ever heard of.
Groves seems to be okay with waiting for Froch to eventually one day change his mind about wanting to fight him, saying to sportinglife.com “A fight with Froch would be a big British fight and that’s what gets people really excited but he is not interested in fighting me. I’ve got no doubt about that and I’m not going to insult him by calling him out…Maybe the fight can happen a year or two down the line. I’d love the challenge but there is no rush.”
I think Groves is really kidding himself here. At the minimum, it’s going to take at least three, likely four to five years for him to get established as a name that boxing fans recognize worldwide and I have some serious, serious doubts that Groves has the talent to make that happen. He barely beat James DeGale, and it would be scary to see what guys like Froch, Andre Ward, Lucian Bute, Andre Dirrell, Anthony Dirrell, Mikkel Kessler, Robert Stielgitz and Kelly Pavlik would do to him. Even in three to five years, I can see some of those names still dominating Groves like no tomorrow. The Dirrell brothers, Bute and Ward will still be around by then and Groves doesn’t have the tools to beat those guys, not now, not ever.
Groves is going to be going over some old ground in a fight with Kenny Anderson (14-0, 11 KO’s) on March 16th in a fight that makes little sense. Groves knocked Anderson out already two years ago, yet is fighting him again for the heck of it. Oh yeah, to hold onto his British title, but who really cares? If that title means ha has to keep fighting Anderson over and over again, he needs to use it as a weight to go deep sea fishing because its weighing him down and not helping him.