By Scott Gilfoid: Earlier Tuesday, Warrior Boxing won the purse bid for the James DeGale (20-1, 14 KOs) – Andre Dirrell (24-1, 16 KOs) to stage the fight. The news means that the DeGale-Dirrell fight will be staged in the United States, as Warrior is said to be affiliated with Dirrell’s adviser Al Haymon.
This is a huge blow to DeGale and his promoter Eddie Hearn, who were both hoping to win the purse bid in order to stage the fight in England. That isn’t going to happen now.
DeGale, 29, tried to put a positive spin on the turn of events by saying that it doesn’t matter where the fight takes place, because he still feels he’s going to make history and capture the vacant IBF super middleweight title when he gets in the ring with the speedy Dirrell.
“Purse bids won by Al Haymon at £3.1m – fight will be staged in USA – date and location TBC – ring is a ring I’m still making history!!” DeGale said on his twitter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAvzvv91eCc
While it is true that a “ring is a ring,” it’s still a much different thing when you have to fight in your opponent’s home country. We’ve seen again and again that the home fighter has a huge advantage when it comes to winning the fight. Take for example the Dirrell vs. Carl Froch fight in 2009.
That fight went the full distance with Froch winning a highly controversial 12 round split decision in a fight that took place in Froch’s home city of Nottingham, UK. For a lot of boxing fans who saw that fight, they had Dirrell winning it. But two of the judges had Froch winning despite him missing over and over again all night long with his shots, and fouling Dirrell repeatedly.
For this fight, I don’t think it really matters where the fight is staged. Dirrell has a big advantage in the talent, speed and experience department over DeGale.
Yeah, DeGale has won his last 10 fights since he was beaten by George Groves in 2011, but DeGale also hasn’t fought anyone that you can call a good fighter at any point in his career. Even the guy that beat him, Groves, is more of a domestic level fighter in my view than a true top 15 level fighter.
This is a really tough match-up for DeGale, because he’s so much slower than Dirrell that it’s not even funny. I would compare it to the Adrien Broner vs. John Molina fight last Saturday night in terms of the difference in hand speed.
If you saw that fight, you’ll have noticed how much faster Broner was compared to Molina. In fact, Molina was so slow that he couldn’t land anything in the fight, because of Broner’s quick reaction time. I see the same thing with the DeGale-Dirrell fight. DeGale is going to be missing all night long with his shots due to Dirrell’s superior hand speed.
Here’s the guys that DeGale has beaten in his last 10 fights:
Marco Antonio Periban
Brandon Gonzales
Gevorg Khatchikian
Dyah Davis
Stjepan Bozic
Sebastien Demers
Fulgencio Zuniga
Hadillah Mohoumadi
Cristian Sanavia
Piotr Wilczewski
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