Groves: I think DeGale vacated to avoid Ndiaye

By Boxing News - 01/16/2013 - Comments

groves56By Scott Gilfoid: Commonwealth super middleweight champion George Groves (16-0, 12 KO’s) thinks former EBU super middleweight champion James DeGale vacated his title just so that he wouldn’t have to fight Mouhamed Ali Ndiaye (22-1, 13 KO’s), the guy that Groves will be fighting next on March 16th for the vacant EBU 168 pound title at the Wembley Arena in London, UK.

Groves said to thesun.co.uk “I think, and I stress ‘I think’, it would appear that DeGale vacated to avoid this guy. Ndiaye was named mandatory and he gave up the title because he didn’t fancy the fight…But I fancy it, I’ll step to it and I’ll have a crack at him.”

I find it hard to believe that DeGale would vacate his EBU strap just so that he could avoid the 33-year-old Ndiaye. I believe that at all. Ndiaye looks like a step down from the last guy that DeGale fought in Fulgencio Zuniga last December, so why would DeGale avoid someone that doesn’t look better than Zuniga?

I just think Groves is trying to pump up Ndiaye so that if and when he beats him, Groves will look better to boxing fans for having done so. I think Ndiaye is going to lose and I don’t rate him. This is a step down in my view from Groves’ last opponent 43-year-old Glen Johnson.

Groves spent a lot of pumping up Johnson before the fight despite the fact that Johnson came into the fight having lost 5 out of his last 7 bouts and was retired when he was offered the fight with Groves. It was a mismatch, although Johnson did stagger Groves on two or three occasions when he did land some hard shots. Groves didn’t look good in that. He threw a ton of shots and then punched himself out.

It looked amateurish on Groves’ part and if he was facing a younger Johnson, I think Groves would have been knocked out in that fight. He fought like he had no boxing IQ at all. Just looking at that fight I couldn’t see Groves beating any of the top fighters at super middleweight because he just looked like someone that was fighting without thinking.



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