By William Mackay: 2008 Olympic Gold Medalist James DeGale (7-0, 5 KO’s) is interested in going after the British and Commonwealth super middleweight titles as soon as possible. Not satisfied with the working his way up slowly, the 24-year-old DeGale wants to speed up the process by going after the belts on the local British fight scene, according to ESPN. DeGale says “The British title is a lovely belt, but I have to admit, the Commonwealth is a great one to have as well. I want to be busy and I want to box again in seven and eight weeks time.
By the end of the year, I want to be British or Commonwealth champion.” Those are respectable and possibly attainable goals for DeGale. However, I think DeGale will have serious problems against the 22-year-old George Groves (9-0, 7 KO’s), who looks like a lot more polished and complete fighter compared to DeGale. Although DeGale seems to get more press than Groves, I would pick Groves to stop DeGale if they were to fight. Groves has the power, the defense, the speed, you name it. He has it all and doesn’t fight in an erratic manner like DeGale. Groves sit on his shots and can punch hard with either hand. He doesn’t need to load up on his shots like DeGale to get his opponents out of there.
DeGale is coming off a 5th round stoppage over Sam Horton on May 15th. In that fight, DeGale changed from southpaw to orthodox constantly, often needlessly, because Horton was badly over-matched no matter what fighting stance that DeGale was using in the fight. DeGale’s defense was poor, as usual, and he still had a problem of slapping when he threw shots. Despite his easy opponent, DeGale still didn’t look all that impressive.
It’s hard to imagine DeGale moving up and succeeding on the world level, looking the way he does now. He needs to get a lot better for him to compete against the top super middleweights in the division. His age, 24, isn’t much of an excuse because Andre Dirrell and Andre Ward are both only 26. Unless DeGale makes a huge amount of progress in a short period of time, I just can’t see him as a successful fighter at super middleweight on the world level. He’s not fast enough, doesn’t hit hard enough and tends to take too many shots when he fights.
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