In the first of three prominent fight cards on Saturday, Chris Eubank Jr steps up against long time contender Arthur Abraham in London for what is a really intriguing super middleweight bout. The card also features a world title fight in its co-main event when Lee Selby makes the third defense of his IBF featherweight strap against former title challenger Jonathan Victor Barros.
Chris Eubank Jr (24-1, 19 KOs) and Arthur Abraham (46-5, 30 KOs) are meeting not only for position in the division, but for a spot in the World Boxing Super Series tournament this fall. The winner of this bout is already penciled in against Turkey’s Avni Yildirim in the first round. That fight is a promising future matchup no matter the outcome Saturday.
Eubank comes into the fight on a five fight winning streak since his lone defeat, but these wins were scored over domestic level British talent. Arthur Abraham, 5-1 in the same time span, marks a significant uptick in level of competition for the 27 year son of British boxing legend Chris Eubank Sr. Abraham’s wins were against better fighters such as Robert Stieglitz, Martin Murray, and Paul Smith, but it should be noted the loss was a very one sided, shut out decision to current WBO titlist Gilberto Ramirez.
In my view, the winner here should be Eubank Jr. Of course Arthur Abraham is a powerful puncher capable of knocking out his British challenger should he land the right shot, but he is a 37 year old, low volume fighter going on the road to meet a better athlete ten years his junior. As long as Eubank moves his hands and defends Abraham’s bursts, he will be banking rounds.
The recipe to beat Abraham has been laid out over the years. If you punch, he doesn’t. There is no counter punching or real transitional defense to offense type movement from the Armenian puncher. If you throw at him, his hands are going to go up in a really tight guard and he will be unable to punch back. Simple activity wins rounds against the former two division titleholder. Many times, however, fighters have supplied the early activity to build a lead, only to have their night end poorly once Abraham warms up midway through the contest.
We have seen Eubank struggle early before in his only other truly prominent bout too. This came in 2014 in his only defeat, a split decision loss to current world titlist Billy Joe Saunders in a fight in which Eubank rallied late and nearly won after a very slow start. In Saturday’s fight, Chris Eubank Jr must win the early rounds before Abraham comes on to eliminate Abraham’s chances of winning a decision with a second half rally.
I think he will win wide though either way. To me Eubank is closer in ability to Abraham conqueror Gilberto Ramirez than to recent Abraham victims like Stieglitz or Murray. I do not mean to say Eubank can compete with Ramirez as I do not necessarily believe he can over twelve rounds, but I do believe he will have the athletic advantages to be able to emulate a lot of what Ramirez did to completely neutralize Arthur Abraham.
In the co-feature, Lee Selby (24-1, 9 KOs) defends his IBF featherweight title against former title challenger Jonathan Victor Barros (41-4-1, 22 KOs) of Argentina. You will see Barros listed as a former champion, but ignore it. The WBA belt he held was not their legitimate world title as someone always held their higher “super” world title during his reign.
With that said, Barros is somewhat of a live underdog here. Not necessarily because he is a really strong challenger, but more because Selby is not a notably strong belt holder. Both Eric Hunter and especially a shot shot, undersized Fernando Montiel were able to give Selby some issues and Barros is a better fighter than both of them. I do favor Selby, especially when you factor in home judging, but this will likely be a competitive twelve round fight.
Surprisingly, this card is actually available in the United States in the form of a reasonably priced $25 mid-afternoon PPV. This is a rare case where a fight being on PPV is a good thing as there was never going to be any other distribution for this quality show stateside. The fight will also be on PPV in the UK on ITV Box Office.
