By Scott Gilfoid: James DeGale (10-1, 8 KO’s) has an important fight coming up next week against European Boxing Union (EBU) super middleweight champion Piotr Wilczewski (29-1, 10 KO’s) on the Nathan Cleverly vs. Tony Bellew undercard on October 15th at the Echo Arena in Liverpool, England.

Beating Wilczewski, ranked number #2 by the World Boxing Organization (WBO), will give DeGale a huge push up in the rankings to where a title shot against Robert Stieglitz, the current WBO champion, or Mikkel Kessler will be within DeGale’s grasp.

As you see, the talented DeGale will soon be fighting for a world title as long as he can get by Wilczewski on the 15th. It shouldn’t be any problem beating Wilczewski, because he lacks DeGale’s speed, power and boxing ability. The only real question in this fight is which round Wilczewski will get knocked out in. If he chooses to fight defensively, I can see Wilczewski surviving to lose by a lopsided 12 round decision, but that’s only if he runs the entire 12 rounds and that won’t be easy to do.

“I want to get that European title and then move on and get a world title as soon as I can,” DeGale said to westlondonsport.com. “I’m raring to go. [George] Groves says he wants to move on to bigger and better things, yet he’s fighting a guy [Paul Smith] I stopped in nine rounds.”

Groves said that he was moving on to bigger and better things after winning a controversial 12 round decision over DeGale last May. However, Groves still hasn’t fought since then and is now fighting Smith, a fighter that DeGale already beat. But it’s still a good bout because I think Smith is too powerful for Groves. It’s better that Groves face Smith to get tested than if he were to take more than he can chew by facing someone a step too far for him. Groves has a chance to win but if he were to face a higher ranked contender then Smith, we really don’t know how well he’d do.