By Michael Collins: Commonwealth super middleweight champion George Groves (15-0, 12 KO’s) thinks he’s going to stop 43-year-old Glen Johnson (51-17-2, 35 KO’s) in their fight tonight at the ExCel Arena, Dockland, London, United Kingdom.
Groves said to Sky Sports News “Clearly Glencoffe knows how to survive, even if he doesn’t come to survive. Stopping him would make a huge statement. I do expect to stop him don’t expect him to just fall over.”
This is interesting because I’ve seen quite a few of Groves’ fights and I don’t consider him to be a big puncher. He may have a lot of knockouts but those knockouts came against pretty much entirely British level fighters or Euro fighters. There’s not much quality among his knockout victims in terms of world class ability. In fact, not one of Groves’ knockouts has come against a world class opponent.
Groves has faced one decent fighter in his career, James DeGale, and many people think Groves was given a controversial decision in that fight last year. Groves never hurt DeGale in that fight, so it’s interesting that Groves is all of a sudden predicting that he’ll knockout Glen Johnson. It seems to me that if he can’t even knockout DeGale, who I don’t rate as being a top five level contender at 168, then how on earth is Groves supposed to knockout Johnson?
Johnson hasn’t been stopped in 15 years since Bernard Hopkins did it in 1997. Since then, Johnson has been in with fighters like Carl Froch, Lucian Bute, Andre Ward, Antonio Tarver, Chad Dawson, Montell Griffin, Clinton Woods, Eric Harding, Richard Hall, Syd Vanderpool, Sven Ottke and none of them were able to stop him.
Groves may win tonight by a decision, but he’s not going to knock Johnson out. The only reason I see Groves winning this fight is because Johnson is 43, and he’s not at the same level he once was. He’s lost 4 out of his last 5 fights and that tells you he’s been around too long.
I don’t see Groves being a championship level fighter. You put him in with Adonis Stevenson, Mikkel Kessler, Froch, Ward and Bute, and I see him losing to all of them. Groves is young enough to wait out most of them, but there will be other good super middleweights that will likely beat Groves as well. Like I said, if he can’t even beat DeGale without controversy than he’s not going to go far. And as far as Groves knocking Johnson out tonight, he must be dreaming.