By Scott Gilfoid: The super talented James DeGale (10-1, 8 KO’s) has picked out his next opponent no. 4 ranked WBO super middleweight contender Piotr Wilczewski (29-1, 10 KO’s) for a fight on September 17th at a still to be determined venue. The bout is very important for both fighters, but mainly for DeGale because he’ll win it and be in a good position to get a crack at the World Boxing Organization paper champion Robert Stieglitz.
To be honest, I don’t think Stieglitz will fight DeGale unless he were to be on the verge of being stripped of his title because DeGale is too talented and Stieglitz won’t want any part of DeGale, especially after he makes an example of Wilczewski in September.
DeGale lost his last fight against Commonwealth super middleweight champion George Groves by a controversial 12 round decision last May. DeGale doesn’t feel he lost that fight, and rightly so because he appeared to win it by at least two rounds or more. I had DeGale winning comfortably even after taking it easy with Groves in the first four rounds of the fight. Groves’ Adam Booth came up with the David Haye fight plan where Groves ran around the ring throwing pot shots and looking not to get hit. It seemed like a pretty cut and dried win as far as I can see.
The Haye style was a total failure for Groves, but the crowd was firmly supporting him and booing the much more talented DeGale from the second the fight started. Two of judges just seemed to follow the crowd noise and gave the fight to Groves. If you look at the rankings at fightnews.com, they still have DeGale ranked well above Groves, who isn’t even ranked in the top tier. What does that tell you? DeGale is the better fighter and the judges scores for the DeGale-Groves fight were ridiculous.
Wilczewski is a decent fighter, but not good enough to beat DeGale. Wilczewski looked horrible in his last fight against Amin Asikainen in March, stopping him in the 3rd round but looking slow, weak and slow footed. He stood in front of Asikainen for most of the fight and took a lot of punishment. Wilczewski has no power to keep DeGale off of him and it’s going to be a huge mismatch. Wilczewski won’t run all night like Groves did and I can’t see him winning any rounds.
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