When underdogs bite back: Renold Quinlan vs. Chris Eubank Jr.

Sub Lead09-Jan-17by John J. Raspanti

By Anthony Cocks

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Once-beaten Australian super middleweight Renold Quinlan 11-1 (7) knows he will be entering the ring as an unknown underdog when he steps into the square circle at the Olympia in London on February 4th in the first defence of his IBO world title against England’s Chris Eubank Jr. 23-1 (18). The IBO super middleweight title fight will mark the debut of England’s ITV in the pay-per-view market.

The 27-year-old from Redfern in Sydney’s inner suburbs has been training for this fight in relative obscurity in a backyard gym in Kempsey on the New South Wales north coast. Each day starts with a 10km run and finishes with a total of six hours training.

“A lot of people don’t know much about me,” Quinlan admitted to Prime 7 Regional News in his homestate of New South Wales, Australia. “But they know after [we fight]. My message to that is ‘be ready for war’.”

It won’t be the first time Quinlan has fronted up to a fight where his chances were written off before the first gong sounded. Last October he travelled south to Launceston in Tasmania where he was hand-picked as the comeback opponent for former IBF and WBA middleweight champion Daniel Geale in his first fight in 14 months.

Career super middleweight Quinlan made Geale’s move up to 168 pounds an uncomfortable one, drilling him with his jab in the first round to set up his big right hand. It was the same big right hand that landed with a boom and closed the show by KO at 1:14 of the 2nd round.

It was the first time in 36 professional bouts that Geale was counted out – a feat not matched by future Hall of Famer Miguel Cotto or reigning middleweight kingpin and pound-for-pound stalwart Gennady Golovkin, both of whom had to settle for TKOs against the tenacious Tasmanian.

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The surprise win not only earned Quinlan the vacant IBO super middleweight championship, but also boosted him to #10 in the Boxrec.com rankings.

“It’s a dream come true to beat one of Australia’s greats in Daniel Geale,” said Quinlan of his breakthrough win. “I was focused and determined on what I had to do and it was great to come away with the victory.”

While Eubank Jr is the more experienced fighter in terms of professional rounds boxed, there’s more than a few similarities between the pair of 27-year-olds. Both have only a single, close loss on their ledgers against a domestic rival. In Quinlan’s case, it was in an Australian title bout to then-undefeated Jake Carr in December 2014, losing by just one point on two scorecards and two points on the other.

Meanwhile Eubank Jr. gave away the early rounds against Billy Joe Saunders to lose a split decision by scores of 114-115, 113-115 and 116-113 in November 2014 for the Commonwealth, British and EBU 160-pound titles.

Both quickly bounced back from their lone losses, collecting at least one world class scalp along the way. For Quinlan, it was his impressive early stoppage of former world champion Geale; for Eubank Jr, it was interim WBA world middleweight titleholder Dmitrii Chudinov who he stopped in the 12^th round of a fight he was comfortably winning.

So where do the differences lie? It’s no secret that with more than double the number of pro fights, Eubank Jr. is going to be vastly more experienced, particularly in the championship rounds. Both are around the same height, seem to have about the same reach, and appear equally natural at the weight. Stylistically too, they are far from miles apart. Both have rock solid whiskers and both can crack with either hand.

Forget the odds and the Eubank brand, this is a fight that will be won by better preparation in the gym and a more composed corner during the fight. Look for the boxer who establishes the pace early on behind an educated jab to set the rhythm and bank enough early rounds to run away with the fight on points.

Questions? Comments? Complaints? Abuse? Email the author at: anthonyc1974@gmail.com