By Sean McDaniel: Unbeaten super middleweight James DeGale (9-0, 7 KO’s) needs to move past wasting time thinking about fighting domestic level opponents like super middleweight Commonwealth champion George Groves (11-0, 9 KO’s). First of all, it’s not a fight that will mean anything because Groves has already been exposed as being fatally flawed in his last fight against Kenny Anderson. And more importantly, Groves isn’t world class. He’s not ranked in the top tier, so it’s a wasted fight for DeGale.

Instead of this waste of a fight, DeGale needs to go after WBA super middleweight champion Dimitri Sartison (27-1, 17 KO’s), a fighter that DeGale would easily beat. The WBA recently put the former WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward into the classification of “Super WBA super middleweight champion.” This was obviously done to create another avenue to get sanctioning fees. But whatever the case, Sartison is technically the WBA champion right now and that’s who DeGale needs to go after.

Groves is someone that DeGale can take on later on in two or three years if Groves ever reaches the point where he’s a top 10 or top 5 fighter. I doubt that will happen unless Groves is skillfully matched against beatable guys to get there, because he’s too flawed to compete with many of the top super middleweights. There’s talk that DeGale wants to fight Edison Miranda, Kelly Pavlik and then for a title. I don’t think DeGale will ever get a fight with Pavlik, because Kelly is going to be matched carefully for a while because of his loss to Sergio Martinez and his alcohol problems. The last thing I see is Bob Arum, Pavlik’s promoter, putting him in with a boxer/puncher like DeGale.