DeGale battles Bozic next Saturday, June 8th

By Boxing News - 06/02/2013 - Comments

degale45By Scott Gilfoid: WBC Silver super middleweight champion James DeGale (15-1, 10 KO’s) will be fighting former Arthur Abraham victim Stjepan Bozic (26-6, 17 KO’s) next Saturday night on June 8th at the Glow, Bluewater, Greenhithe, Kent, United Kingdom.

DeGale, 27, is playing it safe with his career by facing lesser threats so he can keep winning long enough to get a title shot.

From DeGale’s perspective, he sees himself capturing a world title by the end of this year. DeGale’s vision probably doesn’t match reality. The chances of DeGale getting a title shot in 2013 are pretty low at this point and even if he did get a title shot this year, he’s not going to beat any of the current champions.

DeGale said to the dailystar.co.uk “I want to be a world champion by the end of this year and in order to do that, I have to keep busy. Will fight anyone, and believe me, that means a big domestic dust up with the likes of Carl Froch or George Groves.”

Groves hasn’t mentioned wanting to fight DeGale again, and neither has his promoter Eddie Hearn. Groves is looking to fight once more before getting a title shot against one of the champions, possibly Carl Froch.

As far as Froch goes, he’s not mentioned wanting to fight DeGale and neither has Hearn. As such, I think it’s safe to assume that Froch won’t be fighting DeGale in 2013 and probably 2014 as well. The same applies to Groves.

DeGale is doing the right thing by staying busy. I commend him on that, but where he’s messing up is by facing nothing but weak opposition instead of going after quality fighters.

Bozic is a 2nd tier fighter and not someone that you fight to get a title shot. If DeGale was really interested in getting a quick title shot, he’d target the Dirrell brothers or Thomas Oosthuizen.

If he were able to beat one of those fighters, then I could see him getting a title crack in no time flat. But the problem is DeGale isn’t targeting those fighters, so it’s going to take him a lot longer before he eventually gets a title shot.

Bozic has won his last two fights against Gordon Glisic and Misa Nikolic since losing to Abraham and Henry Weber in back to back fights in 2011. In 2009, Bozic was stopped in the 6th round by Dimitri Sartison.



Comments are closed.