Chris Eubank Jr walked the walk to finally shut the doubters up - and George Groves can't not have noticed
Eubank Jr put on a show in defeating Avni Yildirim in Stuttgart to serve notice of his intentions in the super-middleweight division
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Your support makes all the difference.There was nothing pleasant about Chris Eubank Jr’s horrible stoppage win in Stuttgart on Saturday night when he finally sent a tough novice called Avni Yildirim sprawling to the canvas in round three.
Eubank Jr was quite brilliant, chilling throughout the hostile fight, relaxed during the truly ugly week and as cold in victory as his father ever was. The final short left hook would have left senseless any super-middleweight currently fighting and many of the best from the last 30 years.
Poor Yildirim fought like he clearly believed the hype and hostility his team so carefully created from a week of taunting, posturing and making bold promises. It is about time the boxing industry realised that trying to annoy a Eubank is close to impossible in the fight game; Steve Collins did get inside the head of Chris Eubank, the dad, by inventing a tale about hypnotism, but about fifty other fighters and their naïve entourages have failed.
Yildirim had compiled a record of sixteen wins without much resistance and had been trading on an impressive sparring session in Miami with James DeGale, which is now an awkward fact, earlier this year; Eubank Jr jabbed the poor exiled Turkish fighter to oblivion before deciding to end the fight in round three. I saw his father display about the same amount of disrespect a dozen times for men that had no right to be in the ring with him.
Eubank Jr took longer to vault the ropes, stared harder and with more menace at the men and women gathered at ringside to witness his end and seemed to enjoy every second of the walk, the introductions, the fight and the finish. Yildirim had gathered a savage looking group of friends and family at ringside and they were left to fall silent and gasp when their man was sent down and out. Eubank Sr had kept his son back from certain pre-fight events in Germany as the mood darkened and Yildirim’s volatile crew, led by the foul-mouthed Ahmet Ohner, played dark-suited bullies and non-smiling heavies perfectly. “There were saboteurs and we were triumphant,” Eubank Sr said. He loved every second of the nastiness.
In fairness, it looked like Yildirim woke up when he hit the canvas and he was struggling to regain his feet when the referee sensibly waved it off. I thought Yildirim was sleeping as he fell, there is a certain way the body collapses when it is out cold and not just caught and hurt. Eubank Jr stopped being a novelty a long time ago and this win only reinforced the end of his occasionally hilarious apprenticeship, served so often in his father’s glorious shadow.
Eubank Jr will be a ringside guest, which is probably not the right term considering the animosity his presence will create, on Saturday at Wembley when the WBA super-middleweight champion George Groves fights Swindon’s unbeaten Jamie Cox. The Eubank and Yildirim fight and this week’s fight are all part of the bold World Boxing Super Series; the winner at Wembley has to fight Eubank Jr in the semi-final in January or February next year.
“I have been chasing Groves for a long time,” said Eubank Jr in Stuttgart. “I have been chasing a lot of boxers for a long time and Groves has signed for this tournament and if he beats Cox I look forward to fighting him.” It would be a very big fight in Britain if it takes place; the tournament demands a lot of modern fighters with quarter-finals, semi-finals and a final all inside a nine-month period and the harsh truth is that modern boxers seldom have hard fights in such a short sequence of time.
In Stuttgart Eubank Jr was ruthless against a man with few defensive skills and a head full of garbage from a week of verbal villainy; Groves and Cox would fight with a lot more brain in a semi-final, but first the Eubank show adjourns to the old Empire Hall for a spot of theatrics and plenty of blood and guts from Groves and Cox.
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