The defeat itself was painful enough for Groves, but what made it worse, from Groves’ point of view, was both the manner of it and the fact it had been manufactured by a man he couldn’t stand. Worse even than that, it was the pair’s second fight – a rematch – and therefore Groves, twice a loser, no longer had a reason to complain or a nemesis to chase. He had, some felt, been hard done by in their first fight, when stopped controversially in November 2013, but there could be no questioning the empathic conclusion to the rematch six months later. So final was it, in fact, Groves had no case for a third fight and had to accept that his career record would never include a “W” against a man of whom he was still convinced he had the beating. Interestingly, too, this belief never wavered.
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