By Sean McDaniel: James DeGale’s previously scheduled January 27th fight against little known Spaniard Jose Maria Guerrero has reportedly been canceled and a better opponent is being looked by DeGale’s promoter for early 2012. This won’t hurt DeGale any, though, as no one had even the slightest interest in seeing DeGale take a backwards step and fight Guerrero after DeGale had defeated top five contender Piotr Wilczewski in his previous bout to capture the European Boxing Union super middleweight title.

To be sure, DeGale looked awful in the Wilczewski fight and was lucky to get the win, but you would expect DeGale to still moving forward rather than taking two steps back after that win. DeGale needs a lot of work but he also needs to continue to face quality opposition for him to improve as a fighter. Hopefully, his promoter digs up someone good that can give him some problems.

An ideal opponent would be Tony Bellew, the fringe contender that recently fought WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly to a standstill in a close 12 round decision loss. It would be good to see how DeGale would do against Bellew.

DeGale’s promoter might not want to make that match-up because Bellew would have a small amount of size over DeGale because he fights at 175, but the weight shouldn’t be that big of a deal for DeGale. If he’s as good as some people think he is then beating a brawler like Bellew should be child’s play for him. But it would be a good fight for DeGale to help toughen him up for the bigger punchers in the super middleweight division.