By William Mackay: Unbeaten British super middleweight champion James DeGale (9-0, 7 KO’s) will be matched incredibly lightly on Saturday night against France’s Alpay Kobal (7-12-2, 5 KO’s) in a scheduled eight round bout on the undercard of the super featherweight title fight between WBO champ Ricky Burns and challenger Joseph Laryea at the Braehead Arena, Glasgow, Scotland. DeGale is counting on fighting Commonwealth champion George Groves in his next fight, possibly in April or later if Groves’ promoters allow him to take the fight.

It’s a domestic level showdown that DeGale and his promoter wants for some reason. However, it doesn’t mean much beyond that because there are a lot better fighters in the division than Groves. DeGale needs to be going after them instead of wasting significant periods of time trying to prove himself as being the best fighter in the UK when he’s already considered to be the best. Once he Groves out of the way, there will probably be another Groves-like fighter that will stick his head up out of a hole and if DeGale is going to waste time beating all of them, he’ll end up throwing away a good portion of his prime years.

DeGale recently defeated Paul Smith by a 9th round stoppage last December to capture the British title. DeGale needed to move on from there to take on better opposition but it caught up in his old rivalry with Groves. This is a fight that only the British public care about because Groves is a complete unknown on the world scene.