DeGale: I’m going to be crowned the IBF World champion!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXPDxaXFIG0
By Scott Gilfoid: #1 IBF James DeGale (20-1, 14 KOs) recently took a week off from training to get some rest from his long training camp for his fight against Andre Dirrell (24-1, 16 KOs) on May 23rd at the Agganis Arena, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.The DeGale-Dirrell fight will be televised on Premier Boxing Champions on NBC.

DeGale, 29, is back once again training with slightly more than one month left to go before he gets inside the ring with the speedy fast Dirrell. The last thing that DeGale needs is for him to be over-trained for the Dirrell fight because even if he’s at his best in this fight it figures to be a tough task for him.

We’re talking about a fighter that got the better of Carl Froch in 2009. DeGale lost to George Groves in 2011, and that’s a fighter that Froch easily beat twice.

The two Olympians will be fighting for the vacant IBF super middleweight title that Carl Froch gave up recently. Froch could have kept the strap, but it would have meant for him to get back into the gym and start training again. Froch has been out of the ring since he stopped George Groves a year in May, and it’s unclear if Froch will ever fight again.

“I’ve had a week off, I feel refreshed and I am right back on it now. My time is here and I am going to be crowned the IBF World champion,” DeGale said via Sportsvibe.co.uk. “Traveling doesn’t worry me – I like it. As an amateur I traveled all over the world and came home with medals, especially at the Olympics, so when the pressure is on and I am a little nervous, that’s when I come into my own, I relish it.”

As you can see, DeGale isn’t lacking for confidence, is he? I might be tad bit too confident for his own good. I hope DeGale doesn’t go to pieces if things go the opposite of his vision thing. I still remember how DeGale’s last defeat affected him. He took the loss to Groves really hard and it took like four years and 10 soft fights for DeGale to come back from the defeat.

DeGale has talked tirelessly about how he’s previously traveled and done when he fought in the Olympics, but this is a different situation with him facing Dirrell. It’s not a big deal that DeGale traveled when he was in the amateurs. I mean, if you look at the guys that DeGale defeated to win his Olympic gold medal, he really didn’t beat any top quality guys in my view. He defeated Shawn Estrada, Bakhtiyar Artayev, Darren Sutherland and Emilio Correa Jr. Those guys aren’t in the same class as Dirrell, or even close to it in my view.

That’s why it really doesn’t matter that DeGale did some traveling to fight those guys. The traveling isn’t an issue. The problem is that DeGale is going to be in with a super talented fighter in Dirrell, who I believe is world’s better than anyone that DeGale has ever fought before during his six year pro career. Dirrell is a lot better than George Groves in my view, and we saw how Froch beat Groves. Unless DeGale can show more talent than he’s displayed so far as a pro, he’s going to get blanked on May 23rd in losing every round of his 12 round and possibly even get knocked out in the process.

DeGale continued “I don’t think that you can over-train but you can under-rest – when you are trained by Jim McDonnell and you have done eight weeks already, you know he doesn’t mess around in the gym – he pushes me hard every day and he told me that I needed to have a full week off, no thinking about boxing, no running, no training. I needed it and now I feel fantastic and my focus is complete.”

I hope this isn’t the beginning of an excuse for DeGale if he doesn’t do well against Dirrell. I’m sure Dirrell will own up and admit that he was beaten by the better man if he loses. I don’t think he’s the type that will give excuses about over-training, under-resting or whatever. I hope that DeGale does the same if he winds up getting beaten badly by Dirrell in a one-sided fight.