By Scott Gilfoid: British and Commonwealth super middleweight champion George Groves won’t be able to fight on the December 9th card due to a bad knuckle bruise. But the card still has one potential promising fight on it with EBU super middleweight champion James DeGale (11-1, 8 KO’s) facing Spain’s Jose Maria Guerrero (29-2-1, 11 KO’s). This is obviously a backwards step for DeGale, which perhaps is being done because of how truly awful DeGale looked in his last fight against Piotr Wilczewski. However, DeGale can still shine even in facing a 2nd tier fighter like Guerrero if he can step it up with his plodding offense and throw with some power instead of those terrible looking slapping shots he’s been known for.

The fight card is still kind of lacking at this point. Billy Joe Saunders, a middleweight, is scheduled to fight a 10 rounder against TBA. Damon Jones (0-0) will be making his pro debut, Stephen Smith, Liam Smith, Joe Selkirk, Paul Butler and Callum Johnson are also on the card in fights against still to be determined opposition. It looks like DeGale is the only one with a definite opponent and that’s a horrible mismatch.

DeGale has got to make some serious improvements in his game because right now he doesn’t look like he’s on course to win a title in the future. He looks more like a fringe bottom feeder to me at this point in his career and unless he can start showing some talent, I just can’t see him rising above the Euro level stage and winning a title. I can’t see the same for Groves either, but he’s not fighting on the card, so I’ll ignore him until next time he fights. But DeGale just looks like he’s missing some foot speed and power. Those are two qualities that are going to be hard for DeGale to add to his game because usually a fighter is born with those qualities.