By Scott Gilfoid: #2 WBC, #2 WBO, #5 IBF, James DeGale (17-1, 11 KO’s) will be in action tonight against little known Gevorg Khatchikian (28-0, 8 KO’s) in a 12 round bout at the City Academy Sports Centre, Bristol, Avon, United Kingdom. DeGale will have his WBC Silver super middleweight strap on the line for this fight.
Khatchikian, 25, is someone that DeGale’s team picked for whatever reason. I’m still wondering why they bothered to selection Khatchikian, because he’s never faced anyone that you can say is a good fighter, and he’s not ranked in the top 15. At 28, DeGale should be fighting a lot better opposition than this, don’t you think? When you’ve captured a gold medal in the Olympics like DeGale did in 2008, a little more is expected from you than facing fodder opposition over and over again for 5 years as a pro the way that Degale has done.
DeGale will win this fight easily because Khatchikian is not a world class fighter despite his flashy 28-0 record. His record is inflated with nobodies, and it’s shocking and sad that he was able to fight that many times without facing one quality opponent.
DeGale got some good news last with No.3 WBC Badou Jack getting destroyed in one round by Derek Edwards. Jack was the guy that DeGale was supposed to fight in a WBC ordered eliminator bout to pick out a mandatory challenger to face WBC super middleweight champion Sakio Bika. Now with Jack out of the way, it’s unclear if the WBC will just let DeGale face Bika straightaway or if they’ll pick out another top contender for DeGale to face to get the title shot. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. is ranked #1 by the WBC, but they’re pretty much wasting their time with that undeserved ranking of Chavez Jr., because he’s not going to face DeGale in any eliminator to get a title shot at the unpopular Bika.
Chavez Jr. will likely be thrown in with Gennady Golovkin next in July if Chavez Jr. can beat Brian Vera tonight in their rematch in San Antonio, Texas. If the WBC is going to press the issue by forcing DeGale to fight a top contender in a WBC eliminator bout then it’ll come from one of the following contenders: Marco Antonio Periban, Maxim Vlasov or Anthony Dirrell. I doubt Dirrell will get a shot at DeGale, because he was just beaten by Bika, so they’re probably not going to let Dirrell get in position to get another title fight, even though he’s by far the more talented fighter than Vlasov or Periban from my view.
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