Eubank Jr vs Groves

There’ll be a fight on 17^th February, at Manchester Arena, between George Groves and Chris Eubank Jr. The boxing industry is very excited about it; it seems an extremely well-matched fight between two highly accomplished, strong and talented boxers, and it’s very hard to pick a winner.

It’s a semi-final of the World Boxing Super Series, wherein eight of some of the best super-middleweights in the world are contesting an innovative “tournament” format. The stakes are high.

Higher than they should be, as far as I'm concerned. For me, as a boxing fan, this fight is telling me a lot about my changed relationship to boxing. More than excitement, my feelings about the fight are mainly concern and trepidation.

I’m a fan of both Groves and Eubank. They’re skilful and strong and they’ve both been in several exciting fights. Super-middleweight is probably my favourite division, where the fighters are big, powerful men but yet still capable of being swift and deft. Many of Britain and Ireland’s greatest fighters of the last few decades have been super-middleweights – the likes of Joe Calzaghe, Carl Froch, James DeGale, Steve Collins, Nigel Benn and, of course, Eubank’s father.

Chris Eubank Sr may still be, along with Frank Bruno, Britain’s most widely known boxer, with a notoriety that transcends the sport. He is, perhaps, most famous for two things – his “eccentricity” and the fact of his causing permanent injury to Michael Watson.

As a boxer, Eubank was never quite the same after that fight – he held back, fearful of damaging his opponents (this is not just some myth, it was utterly self-evident when Eubank fought). He is now closely involved in his son’s career.

The Eubank-Watson fight is one of the defining moments of British boxing – the unacceptably disorganised nature of the immediate treatment Watson received was one of the catalysts for a vastly improved ringside health-and-safety measures in the coming decades.

Boxing fans like me almost became blasé. You could watch 100s of fights, see 10s of brutal knockouts, and, even if things worrying for a second or two, the doctor would be in the ring, the fighter would be assessed, he’d be sitting, smiling, hugging within a minute or two. Death in the British ring seemed a thing of the past, serious injuries were few and far between.

Boxing became a “safe” sport. No, boxing’s never a safe sport. The spectre of tragedy has surged back into mainstream boxing in recent years. Boxers have died, boxers have been irrevocably damaged. Both Groves and Eubank Jr have been in fights which have ended up with their opponents (respectively Eduard Gutknecht and Nick Blackwell) in comas and with long-term complications.

How does a boxer, how does a person, deal with having done that to another person in the course of doing your job (strictly with the Blackwell-Eubank fight, Blackwell seemed to make a good recovery, but then went into a coma again after sparring again, against strict medical instructions)? Neither Groves nor Eubank Jr appear to have lost their fighter’s instinct. They have both inflicted punishing knockouts since then.

That is not a criticism. Both are exceptionally smart and thoughtful fighters, who have articulated the reality of the situation they are in. Some would quit boxing, some (like Eubank Sr) would lose some aspect of that fighting instinct, but not these two.

So, I’m worried about this fight. Worried about the damage these two are capable of doing to each other. I won’t watch the fight.

I’ve avoided watching certain fights before, but never with this specific fear. Sometimes it’s just been a general nervousness, the same kind that makes me miss hours of test cricket or Andy Murray matches, sometimes just a feeling that the guy I support is going to get beaten. But even with, say, the Amir Khan-Saul Alvarez fight, I wasn’t per se worried about Khan’s long-term health. I, like most, people, predicted that the fight would go exactly as it did – Khan would box well for several rounds and then get knocked spark out by one punch from the damaging (and much bigger) Alvarez.

It’s not the one-punch KOs that do the damage, it’s not the so-called “chinny” fighters you have to worry about. It’s the tough guys, the ones that won’t go down, the ones that slug it out fight after fight, round after round. Guys like Gutknecht and Blackwell, Groves and Eubank.

What makes this fight so attractive is also what makes it so unnerving. Both can take a punch. There is evidence that Groves can be hurt and stopped (famously by Carl Froch) but he would not be described as having a weak chin. And, in any case, Eubank’s power, for the most part, is not one-punch power. He relentless hurts opponents with strong, fast combinations.

While Groves has tremendous one-punch power (said by Martin Murray to be even greater than P4P Number 1 Gennady Golovkin’s), Eubank Jr has clearly inherited his father’s granite chin. He has never been close to being hurt. But he hasn’t been in with anyone who hits as hard as Groves.

The match-up is intriguing, but I fear for both men – fear for how much they’re prepared to go through to win, fear for how hard they and their opponent can punch, fear for their phlegmatic approach to mortality that has allowed them to box on in the aftermath of tragedy.

Many dismiss and condemn boxing far more easily than me. I have found an uneasy peace with the fact it mainly, in recent years, has stayed on the right side of the line – welfare is paramount, the chance of long-term damage, realistically, from any single fight, is tiny. With that, once sometimes turns a blind eye to the essential brutality of what is going on, as well as the build-up of damage over a fighter’s career.

But, this time, the chances of someone getting seriously hurt in the service of a spectacle seem higher than usual to me. Both have form. Both seem like they will put it all on the line.

So I won’t watch the fight. Most likely, both men will be fine and it will be a great fight, but nevertheless, the circumstances surrounding the event have caused me to scrutinise the ethics of the sport of boxing more than ever before.