By Sean McDaniel: EBU super middleweight champion James DeGale (11-1, 8 KO’s) will be making his first defense of his European Boxing Union title against Cristian Sanavia (45-5-1, 13 KO’s) on April 21 at the Arena Nord, in Frederisharn, Denmark. DeGale, 26, is looking for an uneventful fight unlike the struggles that he went through in winning the EBU title against Piotr Wilczewski last October.

DeGale took a lot of punishment of in the Wilczewski fight and it wasn’t a pretty picture to see DeGale getting boxed around by a fighter that was recently easily beaten by Arthur Abraham.

It’s unclear how long DeGale plans on holding onto the EBU title. It might be in his best interest to try and hold onto it as long as possible because he doesn’t match up well against guys like Andre Ward, Lucian Bute and Robert Stieglitz, the three super middleweight belt holders at the world stage. DeGale needs a lot of improvement in the power, speed and foot work department before he starts taking on the top fighters in the division. Until DeGale starts showing signs of improving, he needs to steer clear of of the better fighters in the division.

Sanavia, 37, has little in the way of height at 5’7 1/2″, and that’s perhaps why he’s at the European level rather than the world. He can punch well to the body as we saw in his fights against Karo Murat. However, he’s not a killer puncher, as he lacks power to the head. He can give DeGale problems if he wants to fight on the inside but it’s probably not going to be that kind of fight.

DeGale needs to fight at a much faster pace than he’s done in the recent past if he wants this to be an easy fight. DeGale needs to be able to move at a faster pace with his feet and throw more combinations. He fights in a too relaxed manner and it allows fighters with foot speed and better hand speed to get the better of him like Groves did. DeGale probably has nothing to worry about with Sanavia because he’s an old short guy with zero hand speed, but in the future, DeGale is going to fight other guys like Groves and he’s going to need to be faster on his feet and much more aggressive if he wants to beat them.