World Boxing Super Series bouts set for super middleweights and cruiserweights
The quarter-final draws were made for the World Boxing Super Series super middleweight and cruiserweight tournament at the draft gala on Saturday night at the Grimaldi Forum in Monte Carlo.
In each weight class, eight elite boxers will fight in an elimination tournament. The four quarter-finals are due to take place in September and October this year, with the semi-final’s due to be next January and February and the finals of both divisions scheduled for May 2018. The winner of both the super middleweight and cruiserweight divisions will receive the Muhammad Ali Trophy.
The world champions involved will also be defending their belts in the tournament.
Specific dates and locations are to be announced.
The top four seeds in each field selected their opponents from the unseeded fighters.
In the super middleweight division, WBA champion George Groves (26-3, 19 KOs) entered as the number one seed and opted to fight fellow Brit Jamie Cox (23-0, 13 KOs).
Callum Smith (22-0, 17 KOs) is another Brit who will take part in the super middleweight division, and as the second seed he chose to face Sweden's Erik Skoglund (26-0, 12 KOs).
Smith was due to face Anthony Dirrell for the vacant WBC title in September, but opted to enter the World Boxing Super Series instead, but still holds his WBC mandatory position.
The third seed will be the winner of Chris Eubank Jr (24-1, 19 KOs) vs Arthur Abraham (46-5, 30 KOs), who fight this weekend, and with both fighters in training, Chris Eubank Sr represented the winner and selected Turkey's Avni Yildirim (16-0, 10 KOs).
That left number four seed Germany's Juergen Braehmer (48-3, 35 KOs), a former two-time light heavyweight world champion, who is moving down in weight, to face American contender Rob Brant (22-0, 15 KOs).
At cruiserweight, number one seed Ukraine's WBO champion Oleksandr Usyk (12-0, 10 KOs) selected former WBO champion Marco Huck (40-4-1, 27 KOs).
Russia's Murat Gassiev (24-0, 17 KOs) is the second seed and will face Poland's former IBF and WBC champion Krzysztof Wlodarczyk (53-3-1, 37 KOs), Gassiev also holds the IBF title which he won by split decision against countryman Denis Lebedev in December 2016.
Latvia's WBC champion Mairis Briedis (22-0, 18 KOs) opted to face Mike Perez (22-2-1, 14 KOs), who recently moved down in weight from heavyweight, and in the final match-up of the cruiserweight division, fourth seed Cuba's Yunier Dorticos (21-0, 20 KOs) will meet Russia's Dimitry Kudryashov (21-1, 21 KOs).