The ink now dry on his signed contract with Team Sauerland, Chris Eubank Jr is looking for a big fight. Having gained a ton of knowledge and even more confidence due to the time he has spent working with the great Roy Jones (who, Eubank Jr said when speaking with RingTV.com, will “be in my corner for the rest of my career”) the British star says a fight with WBA middleweight champ Ryota Murata appeals to him in a big way – even if he has to travel to Japan to get it.
Eubank Jr, 29-2(22) – who has not fought since his disappointing TKO win over an injured Matt Korobov, this back in December of 2019 – is Murata’s No1 contender and the 31-year-old says a fight between him and Murata would be “fun” and “very explosive.”
“The pandemic has put up a lot of barriers; there’s a lot of things that you need to get past to make fights happen, but I would go to Japan [if travel was permitted],” Eubank Jr said. “He has the belt, he’s the champ, and sometimes you’ve got to go to the champ’s backyard and take it from him. I’m no stranger to fighting in people’s backyards and being the bad guy. That would be fun. I’ve only seen [Murata] fight once or twice and he likes to scrap, he likes to stand there and trade. I’m also a fan of that style, so putting us together would make for a very fun fight. I see that fight being very explosive early on and I think I’d stop him between rounds six and eight.”
Here’s hoping this fight happens. Murata is indeed an action guy who likes to trade. Eubank Jr, with the great chin he has inherited from his former world champion dad, would likely do as he suggests, and that’s get in there at close quarters and duke it out with Murata. Who would come out on top if this happened? Murata can bang, Eubank Jr can take it. There seems to be no way this fight would be dull.
Murata, who is now 35, and has also been out of action since December of 2019, has never been stopped and he has avenged both of his defeats – stopping Hassan N’Dam N’Jikam having previously dropped a decision to him, while also stopping Rob Brant having previously been outscored by him. Murata is a hard man to beat in Japan. If Eubank Jr could do it it would be the highlight of his career. A career that has yet to reach the heights a good many of us felt it would.
Thus far, Eubank Jr has lost the two biggest fights/tests of his career; with Eubank Jr dropping decisions to Billy Joe Saunders and George Groves.