By Scott Gilfoid: WBC Silver super middleweight champion James DeGale (14-1, 9 KO’s) has finally picked out his next opponent and will be facing 2nd tier fighter Pablo Oscar Natalio Farias (24-2, 16 KO’s) on March 23rd at the Glow, Bluewater, Greenhithe, Kent, UK. DeGale, #2 WBO, #4 WBC, #6 IBF, appears to be taking a step down in class from his last fight against Fulgencio Zuniga, which DeGale won easily by a 12 round unanimous decision last December.
This isn’t exactly the world’s most dangerous opponent, and if DeGale was going to be facing easy opposition like this he’d have been better off keeping his EBU super middleweight title instead of getting rid of it and keeping the WBC Silver 168 lb. strap.
The idea in keeping the WBC Silver title is that DeGale could fight better opposition than what he would with the EBU strap, but I don’t see that as happening here. George Groves, who will be fighting for the vacant EBU super middleweight title next month on March 16th against Mouhamed Ali Ndiaye, is definitely facing the better fighter compared to DeGale.
Farias, 25, comes from Argentina, and he’s faced only two decent opponents during his 5-year pro career, losing to Arthur Abraham and Jose Alberto Clavero. He looked poor in both fights especially the Abraham fight.
The rest of Farias’ opponents have been the poor variety. So what we’re basically looking at here is a fighter with an inflated resume that’s arguably not as good as it appears at first glance.
Farias has won his last five fights since getting stopped in the 5th round by Abraham last year in January, but his opposition has been poor. At 5’9”, Farias is short for the super middleweight division and you have to wonder why he doesn’t down in weight to 160, because he’s going to continue to have problems at super middleweight throughout his career when he faces bigger fighters that can punch.
DeGale, 27, wants a world title shot and he’s certainly ranked high enough to get one. Unfortunately, his chances of beating any of the world champions right now are about zero. If you put DeGale in the ring with Andre Ward, Mikkel Kessler, Abraham and Carl Froch bad things are likely to happen to DeGale, so maybe he’s better off facing guys like Farias. It would be about as good as it gets for DeGale during his career, or at least until the aforementioned champions retire.
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