By William Mackay: British super middleweight champion James DeGale (10-0, 8 KO’s) plans on showing his power and his class on May 21st when he takes on unbeaten challenger George Groves (12-0, 10 KO’s) in their grudge match at the O2 Arena (Millenium Dome), Greenwich, London, England. DeGale, 25, says he wants to knock Groves out and then move on with his career to better fighters.

In a recent interview at Sky Sports Ringside, DeGale said “We were never friends. I’m going to knock this guy out and then move on to bigger and better things.” Indeed, this fight is a preliminary test for DeGale before he starts taking on better fighters at the world level. He needs to face Groves and beat this domestic challenge in order to get to a higher level.

Groves has been sparring with Andre Dirrell recently in the states. DeGale wonders how much that’s helping Groves, because he’s not sure that Dirrell is 100% after his problems in his fight with Arthur Abraham. However, DeGale says he hopes that Groves had a good camp because he doesn’t want Groves to be making excuses afterwards.

As for DeGale, he sparred 30 hard rounds with WBO light heavyweight interim champion Nathan Cleverly and he got a lot from the sparring, as did Cleverly. This is no doubt going to help DeGale, because Groves likes to slug and will be coming forward a lot of the time on May 21st. If DeGale was able to fight the bigger Cleverly to a standstill, then facing the smaller Groves should be a lot easier.