A highly anticipated British middleweight clash takes centre stage in Cardiff on Saturday night with Chris Eubank Jr taking on Liam Williams.
The undercard sees Caroline Dubois make her professional debut before Otto Walin takes on Kamil Sokolowski and undisputed female light middleweight champion Claressa Shields faces Ema Kozin.
A True Test for Eubank
Chris Eubank Jr has conducted his whole career in the spotlight, being the son of another famous boxer. That means that his two losses, to Billy Joe Saunders and George Groves, were probably blown out of proportion.
Eubank has built his way back up the ladder slowly since his loss to Groves, tuning up with recent fights against Wanik Awdijan and Marcus Morrison for a big clash.
The 32-year-old gets that test in the shape of Liam Williams, who sports a 23-3-1 in his own backyard of Cardiff.
Eubank is 1/4 to get the win, while Williams is 13/5, the fight to go the distance is 20/27 and it is even money to be stopped before the 12 rounds are up.
Williams Looking to Bounce Back
Liam Williams suffered just the third loss of his career last time out to Demetrius Andrade in a WBO middleweight title bout in Las Vegas in April of last year.
The Welshman has dominated at British level, winning the middleweight title against Mark Heffron in 2019 and retaining it against Joe Mullender and Andrew Robinson.
However, The Machine has come up short in his two big world title fights, against Andrade and before that Liam Smith.
Despite this clash with Eubank not being a title fight, both men have plenty to prove with Williams looking to show he can make the step up to challenge the world’s best and Eubank will be aiming to prove he too can again have a say at the top table.
Bad Blood Could Contribute to an Early Ending
Williams and Eubank have engaged in a pre-fight war of words that seems to have gone beyond the usual for a fight of this nature, with Williams accusing Eubank of living off his family name and being more interested in being a celebrity than boxing.
Eubank has dismissed those claims and has also insisted he won’t be intimidated by any potential hostile atmosphere from the Welsh crowd in Cardiff.
However, both men would love to announce themselves at the top table with a knockout victory and the fight not to go the distance looks a shade big at even money.
18 of Williams’ 23 wins and 23 of Eubank’s 31 victories have come by way of knockout and the two men could go after each other early.
If Eubank does win, the logical next step may be a rematch with Billy Joe Saunders, who inflicted the first of his two losses by split decision all the way back in 2014.
*All odds correct at time of writing.
