DeGale to Andre Dirrell: I’m coming for you!

By Boxing News - 03/11/2015 - Comments

degale33By Scott Gilfoid: 2008 Olympic gold medalist James DeGale (20-1, 14 KOs) will have to travel to the United States to face #2 IBF Andre Dirrell (24-1, 16 KOs) for the vacant IBF super middleweight title next month at a date a venue still to be determined.

April 24th is one of the dates that is being kicked around, and the city could be Chicago, Illinois. That’s not exactly hometown advantage for Dirrell, who comes from Flint, Michigan, but I’m sure he’ll take it.

DeGale feels he’s going to take this fight, and he’s not bothered in the least about having to travel to America to fight Dirrell in his home country. DeGale points to his gold medal win in the 2008 Olympics, in which he had to travel to Beijing, China to capture the gold medal by defeating the following fighters: Shawn Estrada, Mohamed Hikal, Bakhtiyar Artayev, Darren Sutherland and Emilio Correa. I saw the all the fights, and I had DeGale losing to the Cuban fighter Correa.

YouTube video

The scoring in that fight was very, very strange. Correa constantly landed with the white part of his glove, as required in order to score ppints, yet the judges weren’t scoring points. It seemed very subjective. None of those fighters are in the same class as Dirrell, so it really doesn’t matter that DeGale defeated five guys in four fights while wearing head gear.

We’re talking about a whole different thing with DeGale fighting Dirrell in the pros in a 12 round fight without head gear, and without the odd way that amateur fights are scored.

“I went to the Olympic Games back in 2008 (in Beijing) and I won a gold medal when I was an 80-1 underdog,” DeGale said via Skysports.com. “I am confident of winning…The British public will get to see their very own Olympic champion become the first gold medalist from here to win a world title.”

Like I said, I don’t think it really matters what DeGale did as an amateur in the Olympics, because he didn’t fight anyone in Dirrell’s class. The last time I checked, none of the guys that DeGale beat in the Olympics are fighting at a high level in the pros, not one. That kind of tells you a little bit about what DeGale accomplished in beating those guys.

Sometimes winning a gold medal really means something when it’s a stacked class of fighters who are good enough to go on and become solid pros. For example, Dirrell fought Gennady Golovkin in the Olympics. But with DeGale, he fought a bunch of guys that haven’t done anything at the pro level, and many of them aren’t even fighting in the pros. So what does that tell you?

DeGale had this message for Dirrell: “Prepare yourself because I am coming for you. I am coming for the world title. It is my destiny to become world champion.”

Gosh, I hope DeGale shows more against Dirrell than he’s shown recently in his fights against Marco Antonio Periban, Brandon Gonzales and Gevorg Khatchikian. DeGale looked slow, flat-footed and easy to hit in each of those fights, and those weren’t good fighters that he faced.

You’ve got to hand it to DeGale’s promoter Eddie Hearn in being a very skillful matchmaker in putting DeGale in with the right guys to make him shine rather than guys that he’d struggle with. I think if DeGale had fought Piotr Wilczewski and Hadillah Mohoumadi again, he’d have struggled just like he did when he fought them in 2011 and 2012.

“My last two performances have been spot-on,” DeGale said.

Neither DeGale nor Dirrell have fought anyone that you can call a great fighter lately, so you kind of have to throw out those fights and focus on their skills rather than who they’ve fought. I do think Dirrell’s last opponent Derek Edwards is better than anyone that DeGale has ever fought during his pro career, and I think he’d give DeGale a tone of problem if he faced him due to his huge punching power.



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