Billy's Boxing Blog

Later today there are two world title fights taking place in Sheffield, England. Super middleweight George Groves has his fourth attempt at winning a world title when he takes on Fedor Chudinov and IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook defends his title against mandatory challenger Errol Spence.

For Groves, this is almost certainly his last shot at the big time, and he could not have asked for a more suitable opponent. Chudinov is an aggressive fighter with limited skills, inactive since February 2016, who lost a controversial decision to Felix Sturm in his previous bout. The London-born Groves should find it fairly straight forward to counter Chudinov’s advances with straight right power punches.

The main obstacle to an easy night for Groves is a possible reaction to his previous fight last November. He beat Eduard Gutknecht by a wide points margin, but his opponent collapsed and went into a coma a few hours later and has still not recovered. Boxers who win fights like that often never fully recover from the trauma, so it remains to be seen how Groves will cope.

My prediction: Groves wins a points decision by a wide margin, but fails to finish off a completely outclassed opponent.

The main event features, arguably, the best two welterweights in the world. For the champion, the main issues are how will he react to his first ever loss, how will he adjust to going from middleweight to welterweight again and how will his broken eye socket hold up against a hard puncher.

We do know Brook took the weight off slowly, and was only a few pounds over the limit three weeks ago. He looks in great shape. Will he have the same stamina and punching power as before?

For the challenger, we have yet to see how he performs against a world class opponent and how he handles fighting thousands of miles from home in front of a hostile crowd.

My prediction: while this is a genuine 50-50 contest in terms of trying to pick a winner, I don’t expect a close fought bout. After an initial feeling out period, one of these boxers is going to dominate the other completely en route to a stoppage around the fourth or fifth round. Could the body attack of Spence halt a weight-drained champion in his tracks? Or will Brook take advantage of his opponent’s lack of head movement to deliver some crushing right hand blows? My gut feeling is that because Brook chose his opponent and the venue and trained for 20 weeks to prepare for this fight at the stadium of the football team he supports, he will seize his chances.