By Scott Gilfoid: Former 2008 Olympic Gold Medalist James DeGale (8-0, 6 KO’s) recently attempted to get a fight with unbeaten Commonwealth super middleweight champion George Groves (10-0, 8 KO’s), but he was unable to get a fight with Groves after DeGale’s promoter Frank Warren made an offer to Hayemaker, the promoters for Groves. There was a counter offer made from Groves’ promoters, DeGale says, but the fight didn’t happen. Speaking to thesun.co.uk, DeGale said “Frank made it clear he was willing to pay George very good money, and then they came back with a counter offer. But that proves he doesn’t want to fight. That’s a nice way of saying, ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t want to fight.’ I’m moving on to bigger and better things and I don’t need George Groves, George Groves needs me.

Hopefully, it will still happen one day because I want to knock him out but I don’t need him. I’m boxing for the British title and then hopefully the European or World. So if it comes, it comes, and if it doesn’t, it’s not big deal.” DeGale is absolutely 100% right. He doesn’t need Groves. That guy needs DeGale, if anything. DeGale is the one with the Olympic Gold Medal in his back pocket, not Groves. DeGale is lowering himself by going after this guy. It’s clear he doesn’t want the fight, so DeGale needs to focus on fighting better guys and not thinking in so narrow of terms.

There’s a lot better fighters than Groves out there in the super middleweight division for DeGale to fight, and once he finishes taking care of British super middleweight champion Paul Smith on December 11th, DeGale needs to skip the European level and go straight to world class and take on guys like Librado Andrade, Jesse Brinkley, Sakio Bika, and Curtis Stevens for starters. After DeGale whips one or two of them, then he needs to go after one of the super middleweight champions like Robert Stieglitz, Lucian Bute or Andre Ward. But the last thing that DeGale needs to be worrying about is trying to take on fighters from his own country.

That’s thinking too small. DeGale needs to bail on the UK, and move to someplace like the United States where he can get some good American trainers that can get the most out of his tremendous skills. The U.S. is huge, and he wouldn’t have to worry about chasing one fighter. There’s so many talented fighters for DeGale to choose form over here, and he couldn’t but to get better.