A bruised, bloodied Chris Eubank Jr appeared chastened, to a qualified degree, after suffering a unanimous points loss to George Groves at the Manchester Arena.

“Of course I’m disappointed. This is boxing. You don’t always get things your own way. It was a great fight. I felt I did enough in the later rounds to nick it. But George had the right gameplan. He performed,” Eubank conceded. “So full credit to him.”

Eubank couldn’t ignore Groves’ talents as a boxer but did point to Groves’ greater size (Eubank is a natural middleweight) and the cut Eubank suffered early on in the fight.

“Did I underestimate him? A little bit maybe. The size did come into it. I felt the size difference,” Eubank said. “He did what he had to do. I was getting a lot success inside. His jab, he caught me with a few jabs here and there. I guess that was enough to win some of the rounds.”

He also claimed, “George head butted me a lot in that fight. I don’t know he didn’t get points taken away from him. This is one on one combat, you do what you have to do. That’s what he did.”

Chris Eubank Jr

Eubank maintains that cut significantly hampered him, and reckons it came from a clash of heads. “I couldn’t see out of my right eye for pretty much most of the fight. It affected my style. I had to resort to loading up because every time he moved to my right, I couldn’t see him. So I would just throw big punches. Tactics is a big thing. His tactics, he did the right thing. He negated some on my work early on,” Junior said.

“But I did feel that towards the end, the later rounds I was hitting him with a lot of shots and hurting him. It is what it is.”