By Sean McDaniel: BBBofC super middleweight champion Paul Smith (29-1, 15 KO’s) defends his title against the up and coming 2008 Olympic Gold Medalist James DeGale (8-0, 6 KO’s) next Saturday on December 11th, at the Echo Arena, Liverpool, Merseyside. Smith, 28, is making his third defense of his British title and wants to win the fight and move on to the world level where he hopes to take on one of the champions for a nice payday.

However, the 24-year-old DeGale is standing in his way from realizing that dream and boxing fans and writers think Smith won’t win this fight despite DeGale being much less experienced. Smith will no doubt gain huge respect should he beat DeGale, but he’s going to have to fight much better than he’s done in recent fights because DeGale is a very difficult fighter to figure out because of his constantly shifting angles for his shots and his power.

DeGale is hard to gauge because he doesn’t throw hard punches a lot, and has a way of sneaking in big shots by loading up on punches that his opponents aren’t expecting. That sudden shift in power makes DeGale much more dangerous, and at the same time, he’s someone that lands a lot of shots because of his nonstop punching technique. Smith has had things fairly easy during his career because he hasn’t yet faced a fighter with any real power during his seven years as a pro. The best fighters that Smith has been in with – Tony Quigley, Tony Dodson, and Steven Bendall – had no power to speak of. DeGale is going to be a huge step up in terms of power for Smith and this could be a shock for Smith.

In an interview at Sky Sports News, Smith said “He’s [DeGale] stepped up too soon. He’s better than [George] Groves in my opinion, but I’ll leave them to it….Every fight I’ve had the pressure has been on me, but in this fight there’s no pressure on me, and I’ll perform better for it. I don’t mind coming under the radar so to speak. I’ll earn everyone’s respect when I beat James DeGale.” I think what Smith is trying to say is that he knows that people are predicting for him to lose to DeGale, and that in turn has taken the pressure off of him because Smith has been picked to win his recent fights up until now.

Let’s hope for Smith’s sake that he’s right, because DeGale is going to be really bringing it next Saturday night and Smith is going to be facing some real heat in this fight. He could be in for a big shock when DeGale starts landing, because this isn’t going to be one of the typical weak punchers that Smith has been facing during his career.