Roy Jones Jr says he’s being brought in to train Chris Eubank Jr how to defeat Canelo Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin because he’s already good enough on his own to defeat his next opponent Liam Smith on January 21st at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England. Eubank Jr-Smith will be shown live on DAZN.
The 40-year-old Golovkin is expected to retire soon, and he’s probably not going to stick around long enough to fight Eubank Jr because it’s not a fight that would register for U.S. audiences.
You can’t sell that fight on PPV on DAZN because fans in the United States won’t buy it. Eubank Jr is invisible to American fans because he’s been padding his record since his loss to George Groves in 2018.
Jones might be wasting his time if he’s training the 12-year professional Eubank Jr to fight Canelo or Golovkin because if he hasn’t fought either of those two guys by now, it’s likely he will never.
Eubank Jr isn’t a big name in the sport due to the many years that he’s wasted fighting little-known opposition in England. He could be a popular fighter, but he’s thrown away a lot of time by fighting guys like Marcus Morrison, Wanik Awdijan, Liam Williams, Matt Korobov, and now Liam Smith.
Few boxing fans would argue with Jones about his belief that Eubank Jr (32-2, 23 KOs) can beat Liam Smith (32-3-1, 19 KOs) because it’s another example of Chris choosing opposition from a weight class below the one that he’s fighting in.
The soon-to-be 35-year-old former WBO 154-lb Beefy Smith is not in his prime at this stage of his career, as we saw with his life & death battle against welterweight Jessie Vargas in 2022.
Eubank Jr should fight better opposition than Smith if he wants to improve his game enough to defeat Canelo or Golovkin.
“For Liam Williams or Liam Smith, Chris doesn’t need me to beat these guys because he can beat both of these guys,” trainer Roy Jones Jr said to Sky Sports. “He doesn’t bring me in for these particular fighters; he brings me here to help him get better prepared for names like GGG [Gennadiy Golovkin] or Canelo [Alvarez].”
“Junior is the undisputed star of the division at the moment,” said promoter Kalle Sauerland to Sky Sports about his belief that Chris Eubank Jr is the biggest star in the middleweight division.
“I mean that respectfully towards ‘GGG’ [Gennadiy Golovkin] because he’s having a timeout, whatever he’s doing. But the superstar is Junior at the moment. I mean eyeballs, money, numbers,” said Sauerland.