Farewell saint

Just wanted to say a special thank you to George groves who retires today. He's had a decent career with his 2 fights with frock the obvious highlight. Challenged for the world title 4 times and won it fourth time round s great British fighter not elite level but he achieved more then most good luck in the future mate trained at my local Dale youth club.

Btw frock v groves 1 round 6 one of my fav goodluck bro

One of the more polarising figures in British boxing in recent times, probably because he always seemed to have one eye on PPV numbers and trying to gauge public perception of him and his opponent.

For me, Groves never quite hit the heights he was capable of, and never recovered from the Froch saga. After beating DeGale, from late 2011 to 2014 Groves looked like he'd developed in to a very quick, technical boxer with a surprisingly heavy punch and good head movement; after Froch put him to bed, he always looked like a fairly basic, at times sluggish jack of all trades with no real stand out features and a porous defence.

Solid win against Eubank Jr., but as I've been trying to tell anyone who'll listen for years, Eubank Jr. is plainly average - to this day I have no idea how or why he was the betting favourite ahead of taking Groves on.

Has always come across a pretty canny guy when he's not playing to the cameras, so I'm not totally surprised he's called it quits now. He knows that he's unlikely to ever command the kind of attention and money he did back in the Froch days, albeit I thought he'd stick around long enough for a DeGale rematch. But if money is no longer a concern (which it shouldn't be) and the desire and motivation have gone, then he's doing the right thing.

Wouldn't be surprised to see some punditry work thrown his way in the future. Maybe him and Froch will end up like Holmes and Cooney or Magic and Bird.  

I liked Groves as he was a decent solid professional who was good enough to win a portion of the world title without excelling.

I felt he was unlucky to have had the fight stopped in the first Froch fight when it was, but I think Chris is right - he never quite reached his potential. I think a second fight between both him and JDG when they were both World Champs would have been fantastic, but it was not to be.

He does seem to have an intelligent head on his shoulders though, and I have no doubts that he will join the likes of Jonny Nelson and Paulie Malignaggi as a pundit for hire, provided he doesn't don a David Price-esque suit...

Thank you George, mainly for putting JDG in his place and that first Froch fight.

George, it's not that I don't like you or anything like that, but if you retire, then please, stay retired.

Best of luck.

The Froch fight right up there as one of the worst stoppages in a world title fight in a British Ring and that’s from a big Froch fan but what’s right is right lol

Maybe Froch would have gone on to stop him no one knows George will think otherwise Froch was coming on big and the stoppage deprived history of an epic climax and a probable British classic