By Sean McDaniel: Former 2008 Olympic Gold Medalist James DeGale (8-0, 6 KO’s) takes on British super middleweight champion Paul Smith (29-1, 15 KO’s) tonight in a fight that will tell how good Smith and whether DeGale is as good as the hype that’s been said about him.

DeGale said this in an article at the dailymail.co.uk: “I can’t see it going 12 rounds anyway, but people don’t have to worry about me being able to do 12 rounds. I did five rounds of sparring with three different sparring partners…This is not too soon for me. I’ve done the training and it has come at the right time. I’ve been calling for it so I have to put up or shut up.”

Indeed, there are some boxing fans and writers who think that DeGale has taken too big of a step at too soon of a time for his still young career. However, DeGale is very advanced for a fighter with only eight fights under his belt. You have to put DeGale’s experiece to at least the level of Smith because of all the amateur fights that DeGale had against excellent opposition. DeGale is bigger, stronger and is more athletic compared to the slow moving Smith. There’s not much Smith has going for him in this other than his title belt, which he may very likely lose to DeGale. The problems that Smith has in this fight is that he won’t know from what angle DeGale’s punches will be coming from because of DeGale’s tendency to switch positions when throwing shots. DeGale also has a huge variety of punches and reminds me a lot of a young Naseem Hamed.

Prediction: DeGale by 8th round TKO