Can anyone here give me an idea of how popular George Groves was in the UK prior to the Froch fights?
Benefited hugely fan wise with his rivalry with Degale. As Degale behaved like such an imbecile and was such an odds on favourite with the bookies, when Groves stood up to him he won the fans over, and as he got the win he kept the fans he gained in the build-up.
George was abused to such an extent by DeGale, that lots of people took an instant dislike to DeGale, and sided with George, who was very quiet and respectful. In the build up to the Froch fight George played the villain, and made himself look an idiot, even more so after he was left in a crumpled heap after promising to expose Froch. In my opinion he's done at the top level, and has alienated a lot of potential support.
Groves made a massive massive PR mistake on the build up to the second froch fight. Fair enough he talked a lot of s*** during the build up to the first one and it worked he genuinely got inside frochs head. After the poor ref stoppage the crowd were cheering for groves and booing froch for not admitting the stoppage was early. Groves should of captalised on this and become the fan favourite on the build up to the return, instead he come across like a whining brat who was hard done by. Playing silly games and it just didn't seem to have any effect on froch at all. Imagine if during that build up groves had been super respectful and just said 'I don't need to wind carl up this time I have been in there with him and he is a good fighter but i dominated the fight it's as simple as that, got caught once and the Ref jumped in, I am so confident going into this second fight I don't need to play any games' I think he would of got a lot more respect, i for one was turned into a groves fan after the first fight but after all the build up to Wembley I was hoping froch would shut him up again. It may sound something petty not going down the right PR route during a build uo to a fight but it can seriously effect your earning potential in future fights. Groves was in the biggest fight in uk history and this mistake cost him keeping a hugh fanbase after the fight.
This. Although I think he can still mix it up at world level, he's never gonna be a great/dominant champ. Flash in the pan belt holder at best IMO.
He had a good sized following - one by beating and knocking out british fighters on sky Secondly, I knew about him and had watched a lot of his fights on David Haye undercards so he got loads of exposure and adam booth and haye were credible at that time when they were bigging him up No one expected what happened in the first round for the first froch fight though
