My sights are set on Chris Eubank Jr, not retirement, insists George Groves

George Groves has scotched talk of retiring after nine years and 30 paid fights – several of them wars, two of them big stadium thrillers against Carl Froch that did not go to plan – saying that he is determined to retire as an unbeaten world champion.

However his farewell to boxing pans out, the 29-year-old Londoner insists it will be memorable for the right reasons, starting with a fight against Chris Eubank Jr in London in the new year that has the potential to be a classic.

Groves delivered the body punch of the year deep into the solar plexus of Jamie Cox in the fourth round of their bout at Wembley Arena on Saturday night to retain his WBA super-middleweight title and seal a semi-final showdown with Eubank in the Boxing World Super Series for the inaugural Muhammad Ali Trophy, in January or February.

“I’m signed in for it, and I’d like to win it,” Groves said. “I’ve got a minimum of two more fights [Eubank Jr followed by a possible final in early summer against the Liverpudlian Callum Smith], then we’ll see. I’m in great form. I’m enjoying my boxing. If I keep winning, then I’ll keep going. But the body’s responding well. I’m not taking big shots. No thoughts of retiring, and I’m not counting down the days.

READ MORE: George Groves beats Jamie Cox in four and prepares for Eubank fight

READ MORE: Groves vs Eubank Jr - Britain’s next domestic superfight

“I know if I box like I did tonight he’s got no chance,” Groves said of Eubank, who booked his place for the next stage when he knocked out the tough, previously unbeaten Turk, Avni Yildirim, in three rounds last weekend in Stuttgart. “Eubank’s improved over the years but he hasn’t fought anyone at my level,” Groves said.

Billy Joe Saunders, who held off a late charge by Eubank to outpoint him three years ago in his 20th paid fight before going on to win the WBO middleweight belt two fights later, would disagree with Groves’s assertion, but that is an argument for another day.

What cannot be disputed is the quality of Groves’s performance against Cox – and the Swindon fighter’s spirited challenge before a split-second mistake made his early work redundant.

Groves’s body shot off the ropes over a lazy right cross was as perfect a counter as the right hand down the pipe with which Carl Froch knocked out Groves in the eighth round of their rematch at the stadium next door in 2014. Groves rightly insists that he has improved vastly as a fighter since then.

Cox agrees. “He’s a got a very good boxing brain. I’ve never been hit to the body like that, never been put down by a body shot in my whole career.”

Eubank was an interested witness and was as theatrically impassive as ever when he faced off with Groves afterwards.

A fight that would have otherwise been mired in months of tiresome negotiations is already nailed on and will be a dream to sell. This is a tournament that has been blessed so far with exciting, competitive fights and decent crowds. It certainly has been more coherent than the trailblazing 2009 Super Six 12-stone tournament – also a Sauerland experiment – which Andre Ward won after bouts stretched out over nearly two years.

However Saturday’s was an event marred again by brawling outside the ring. While there was an Anglo-German element to the crowd violence in Stuttgart last weekend, these outbreaks of idiocy looked to be sparked by the odd spilt lager and a predictable surge of testosterone.

When asked if he had been distracted by the final and longest eruption of ringside thuggery – just as he was putting Cox on the floor – Groves smiled and replied: “It had nothing to do with me.”

It did not. But it is up to his sport and its promoters to ensure that alcohol-inflamed passions in the paid seats are contained within reasonable boundaries. Some of the stewarding was passive in the extreme. The atmosphere in the 9,000-seater arena was exceptional, ruined only by comedians determined to impress their friends with amateur fisticuffs. They are an embarrassment to themselves and a danger to others.