James DeGale beats Rogelio Medina

By Boxing News - 04/30/2016 - Comments

James DeGale vs Rogelio Medina(Photo credit: Esther Lin/SHOWTIME) By Jim Dower: IBF super middleweight champion James “Chunky” DeGale (23-1, 14 KOs) had to work hard to defeat mandatory challenger Rogelio Medina (36-7, 30 KOs) by a 12 round unanimous decision on Saturday night in Showtime’s de facto tournament at the DC Armory in Washington, DC.

The final judges’ scores were 115-113, 117-111 and 117-111. The scores were wider than you would believe by watching the fight. Medina appeared to win at least five rounds. 117-111 didn’t give Medina credit for the good work he did in many of the rounds.

Medina, 27, threw a lot more punches than DeGale in the fight. Medina was the much busier fighter in landing a lot of hard body shots. DeGale made it easy for Medina by resting on the ropes frequently, which enabled Medina to tee off with powerful hooks to the body.

There was bad blood at the end of the fight when DeGale choose to come up to Medina and stick his tongue out. It was bad sportsmanship for DeGale to do this because Medina had fought a clean fight. It was DeGale that was fouling all night long with him shouldering Medina hard and getting away with it without losing points.

DeGale did a lot of moving around the ring to avoid Medina’s powerful body attack. However, Medina was able to catch up to DeGale in every round and land shots to the body and the head. DeGale was throwing a lot of uppercuts from long range which he was able to get away with. However, in the last three rounds, Medina was catching DeGale frequently with left hooks when he was throwing his long range uppercuts.

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Tonight’s victory puts DeGale in the position to fight the winner of the Lucian Bute vs. Badou Jack fight later this year in September in Showtime’s mini-tournament. DeGale wants to unify all the 168lb titles before moving up to light heavyweight to chase Adonis Stevenson and Sergey Kovalev for big fights.

DeGale is going to need to fight a lot better than he did tonight when he faces the winner of the Jack-Bute fight later this year. Medina made the fight close, and Badoy annd Bute would be more difficult.