By Allan Fox: With the IBF super middleweight title now in his possession, James DeGale (21-1, 14 KOs) will be fighting four to five months from now in September or October in a fight that will be staged in London in the UK, according to his promoter Eddie Hearn. He wants a big name for DeGale, but not necessarily someone that is still on his game.
The big names at super middleweight are few and far in between. Once you remove names like Carl Froch from equation, it gets down to fighters who really aren’t big names, but they are guys that the hardcore fans will recognize.
Jim McDonnell, the trainer for DeGale, told Boxing News that 35-year-old Lucian Bute (31-2, 24 KOs) and 36-year-old Mikkel Kessler (46-3, 35 KOs) are both possibilities for DeGale’s next fight in September or October. Kessler hasn’t fought in two years since his 12 round unanimous decision loss to Carl Froch in May of 2013.
If Kessler gets the fight, it’ll have been almost 2 ½ years since he last saw action. That’s not exactly ideal for a fighter to have that kind of time off in between fights, especially when he would be given a world title shot. I’m not sure if the International Boxing Federation would sanction a fight between DeGale and Kessler, given the Danish fighters’ lack of a top 15 ranking.
Unless Hearn could smooth it over with the IBF, they might say no a fight between DeGale and Kessler. Bute is a different matter. He’s still ranked at #6 by the WBC at 168, even though Bute has lost 2 out of his last 3 fights, and hasn’t fought since his 12 round unanimous decision loss to Jean Pascal in January 2014.
Bute looked really poor in that fight and appeared to be gun-shy from his knockout loss to Carl Froch in 2012. Bute has won only one fight since the loss to Froch in beating light heavyweight Denis Grachev in November 2012. It’s surprising that the WBC still has Bute ranked in their top 15 considering his lack of fights in the 168 pound weight class in the past three years.
Hearn would be taking a huge gamble of he were to pick either Bute or Kessler as DeGale’s next opponent because there’s a very real possibility that those two old timers wills suffer injuries during training camp, and won’t be able to make it to the fight with DeGale in one piece. So instead of DeGale getting a fight in September or October, he may wind up with no fight at all in a similar way that heavyweight Tyson Fury kept having his fights against David Haye canceled due to injuries from the aging former world champion.
DeGale and Hearn are trying to take advantage of DeGale winning the IBF super middleweight title last Saturday in his 12 round decision win over Andre Dirrell at the Agganis Arena, in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Hearn says that he’d like to put DeGale in with Gennady Golovkin, Carl Froch and Andre Ward, but not for his next fight in London in September.
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