By Scott Gilfoid: The latest and not necessarily the greatest of the flawed British fighters to emerge recently from the UK James DeGale (2-0, 1 KOs) will be getting back in the ring against journeyman Ciaran Healy (10-10-1, 2 KOs)on June 27th on the undercard of Amir Khan vs. WBA light welterweight champion Andriy Kotelnik.

DeGale, 23, the 2008 middleweight Olympic Gold Medalist for Britain, is making his third fight as a pro and looks as if he’s going to be matched with an extra soft opponent for DeGale to hopefully look good against. Thus far, DeGale has looked anything but good in his first two fights and with his slapping style of fighting, he appears to be a fighter that will be a wash out as a pro.

In the Olympics DeGale was able to succeed at that level due to the shortness of the bouts, and the style of the fights being more of point scoring emphasis rather than on sitting down on his punches. Now that DeGale is a pro, he’s still mostly slapping with his shots and fighting very cautiously even against the D-level opponents that DeGale has been put in with.

In his two fights, the crowds haven’t been too pleased with DeGale’s defensive oriented style of fighting and have booed him often in the fights. After being initially upset with the booing in his first fight, DeGale tried to compensate by coming out aggressively in his recent bout against Jindrich Kubin in May.

DeGale came out fast and was able to knock Kubin down with combination in the opening seconds of the fight. However, DeGale went back to his slapping punches thereafter and ended up slapping Kubin into submission later in the round. For DeGale’s loyal boxing fans, this was a sign of progress. But for a more discerning view like mine, I saw basically the same weak-punching, defensive fighter that DeGale was before and I saw little if any progress over DeGale’s first fight.

In selecting the 34-year-old Healy, DeGale and his team have found an opponent that DeGale can beat and look good against, maybe even look powerful in beating. But make no mistake, the fight will do nothing for DeGale because he won’t have to get out of his comfort zone and will probably continue to slap away at his opponent like he’s done in his previous two fights.

DeGale is decent fighter for a local lad, but if his management team have designs on him competing for a world title someday, I think they’re sadly mistaken about his talent level. I do see DeGale fighting for a title at some point in his career, because obviously he’s going to be matched softly until close to his 30th fight and I expect him to be undefeated against the mediocre opponents.

However, when he’s put in with champions like Kelly Pavlik, Arthur Abraham and Felix Sturm, I see DeGale getting destroyed. I see DeGale being brought along in the same manner that Amir Khan has with DeGale facing easy opposition until put in with the weakest of the three middleweight champions. It won’t matter, because I see DeGale losing.