By Scott Gilfoid: WBC Silver super middleweight champion James DeGale (17-1, 11 KO’s) retained his title with a 12 round unanimous decision win over the economical Dyah Davis (22-4-1, 10 KO’s) on Saturday night at the Glow, Bluewater, Greenhithe, Kent, United Kingdom. The final judges scores were 118-110, 118-110 and 118-110. DeGale appeared to gas out after the 8th round, and did almost nothing until the 12th round.
Lucky for DeGale, he was facing an opponent that was incredibly economical to the point where he was defeating himself by failing to throw enough punches. The fight was there to be won by Davis if he’d have just thrown punches, but he just wouldn’t throw any shots and gave the fight away.
DeGale dominated the first 7 rounds by hitting and constantly moving out of the way of Davis’ pot shot punches. In the 8th, DeGale seemed to tire out and he got hit by a hard right hand to the head from Davis. The shot caused DeGale’s nose to bleed and he looked completely exhausted to the point where he couldn’t throw any punches. I figured that DeGale’s fatigue was from DeGale’s constant movement because he was moving for no reason for the first 7 rounds because Davis wasn’t throwing anything and DeGale was doing laps around the ring like a horse. It looked totally bizarre like DeGale had no sense at all. You don’t move like that unless you have a reason, and believe me there was no reason for DeGale to move because Davis looked like someone who couldn’t pull the trigger on his shots.
DeGale will likely face Marco Antonio Periban in a WBC super middleweight eliminator bout next to pick out a mandatory for WBC champion Sakio Bika, although DeGale’s promoter Mick Hennessay wouldn’t commit to the eliminator against Periban. He’s keeping all options open in case one of the champions selects DeGale for a title shot without him having to fight in an eliminator bout. If that were to happen it would likely be IBF/WBA champion Carl Froch, because he’s mentioned that he wants to fight DeGale.
Based on what I saw of DeGale tonight, I give him no chance of beating the likes of Andre Ward, Froch, George Groves, Bika, Mikkel Kessler, Arthur Abraham, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., Edwin Rodriguez, Andre Dirrell, Robert Stieglitz, Anthony Dirrell, and Thomas Oosthuizen. I rate all of them as being better fighters than DeGale. To me, DeGale looks like a 7 round fighter, because he was gassed after the 7th round tonight and that’s what happened to him in his loss to Groves.
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In undercard action, middleweight Chris Eubank Jr (12-0, 7 KOs) stopped an overmatched Frankie Borg (8-2, 3 KOs) in the 6th round. Nothing to see in this fight, as it was a pure one-sided affair.
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