By Jason Kim: Unbeaten James DeGale (8-0, 6 KO’s) will be entering the hostile Echo Arena in Liverpool on Saturday to take on British super middleweight champion Paul Smith (29-1, 15 KO’s) in front of what will likely be 10,000 pro-Smith fans. DeGale says he’s ready to beat Smith and doesn’t mind fighting in front of so many hostile fans.

DeGale, 24, understands that it’s par for the course and isn’t going to let it throw him off his game. DeGale is going to be taking a big step up in terms of competition and rounds because before this fight the best opponent that DeGale has faced is Carl Dilks, whom he beat by 1st round stoppage in September. DeGale may not have as much experience as Smith, but he does have Olympic credentials having won the Olympic Gold Medal in 2008. That counts for a lot. But what could be a factor in this fight is if the bout goes into the later rounds. DeGale hasn’t gone beyond five rounds before against limited opposition. DeGale has sparred 12 rounds many times during his training camp for this fight but it’s not quite the same thing as fighting all out against an opponent that’s trying to beat you.

Smith, 28, is coming off of two consecutive hard fights against Tony Quigley and Tony Dodson. DeGale is expected to be even tougher than those two fighters, and Smith is going to have to come up with some kind of plan to take DeGale out of his game. Smith looked horrible when he fought a clever fighter similar to DeGale in Steven Bendall in 2008. Smith wasn’t able to out-slug Bendall and ended up getting a boxing lesson in a 10 round loss. Smith is going to have to figure out a good strategy to use against DeGale, because with all the angles he uses to throw punches, he’s very hard to beat.