By Terence Dooley
Liverpool’s Tony Bellew was unimpressed with Chris Eubank Jr.’s performance against WBA Super world and IBO titlist George Groves at the Manchester Arena on Saturday night and has advised the 28-year-old to make a number of changes following the WBSS semi-final decision defeat and the loss of his IBO belt. “Bomber” believes that a better training set-up needs to be in place as well as advising Eubank to consider a return to 160lbs.
“It was clear that Eubank was getting no advice in the corner—he looked raw and a novice, a bull in a china shop,” he said when speaking to Gareth A Davies of The Daily Telegraph.
“He's just a fighter, not a boxer and this sport is called boxing for a reason. It is an art. I don't see Eubank progressing unless he changes things up dramatically. He also needs to go back down to middleweight because he lacks power at super middleweight.”
Chris Eubank Sr. and long-time trainer Ronnie Davies worked the corner on the night, but Jr. (now 26-2, 20 early) has maintained that he is self-trained and his father has also argued that he has enough of a boxing brain to negotiate big fights.
Groves (28-3, 20 KOs), though, proved them wrong by comprehensively out-boxing his opponent, who showed very little ring generalmanship as he trundled to a deserved 117-112, 116-112 and 115-113 defeat on the cards.
Indeed, Prince Naseem Hamed covered the fight for ITV Box Office and the former featherweight world champion ridiculed the performance before advising the loser to retire from the sport altogether.
Groves confirmed that he dislocated his left shoulder in the final round and will now wait to see if he can make the June final at the O2 Arena against the winner of Callum Smith’s fight against Juergen Braehmer, which takes place in Germany this weekend.
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