By Edward Chaykovsky
Middleweight contender Chris Eubank Jr. (23-1, 18 KOs) is not only confident about avenging the only defeat of his career, he believes he can do it in style.
Back in November of 2014, Eubank lost a twelve round split decision to Billy Joe Saunders, who now holds the WBO middleweight crown.
For his next ring outing on February 4th, Eubank is making a jump to super middleweight to challenge Renold Quinlan for the IBO world title. Eubank, 27, is jumping to 168 to expand his potential fight options. If Eubank wins next month, he still plans to compete at middleweight.
Eubank explains that he didn't execute the right strategy in the contest with Saunders and promises that he won't make the same mistakes in the rematch.
The second time around, he plans to let his hands go early with power punching combinations - and he predicts a complete mismatch that ends in four rounds or less.
In his last ring appearance, which snapped a one year layoff last December, Saunders struggled to win a twelve round decision over unknown contender Artur Akavov.
“Saunders has a win over me and that fight is never going to leave my mind until I even the score. It was my first twelve round fight and I’d only gone eight rounds before that. I believe that played a big part in my performance as far as pacing myself too much early on during the fight," Eubank Jr. told The Mirror.
“I slowed the pace down too much in the early rounds and that’s where I gave points away. When I got to the fifth-round I realised it was easy and that it was ok. Then I turned it up and started dominating the rest of the fight. I understood then I was a twelve-round fighter and that I can go twelve rounds. I know I need to go from round one now and I’m a whole different animal in the ring than I was two years ago.
“I’m much more experienced, much stronger and much quicker. Everything about me is so much more finely tuned that I believe in the rematch, when it does happen, I believe it’s going to be a complete annihilation. I’ll take the guy out in four rounds.”
