DeGale: Groves put a good show against a rubbish champion [Froch]

By Boxing News - 02/18/2014 - Comments

By Scott Gilfoid: Super middleweight contender James DeGale doesn’t think what George Groves accomplished against IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch in giving him a hard fight was a that big of a deal in their fight last November. DeGale sees Froch as an old fighter and not highly skilled.

“All he’s [Groves] done is put on a good show against an old, rubbish champion,” DeGale said to the Guardian. “Froch was technically horrendous. In his last fight against Groves, he was bad, falling over his own feet, his hands down. He’s terribly slow and that’s not me bad-mouthing him.”

It’s really hard to disagree with anything that DeGale says here because Froch is painfully slow, and he does have a bad habit of drooping his hands down by his waist when he fights, seemingly inviting his opponents to nail him with head shots. It only seemed obvious that Groves was going to have a field day nailing Froch due to his wide open defense.

The only question in the fight was whether Groves would be able to take Froch’s best shots when it came time for him to nail him. As it turns out, we never got a chance to find out whether Groves could handle Froch’s power shots, because the referee halted the fight just when it was getting started in the 9th round.

DeGale will be fighting Badou Jack next in a WBC middleweight eliminator that could take place in April or May. The winner of the DeGale-Jack fight will be the mandatory challenger for WBC 168 lb champion Sakio Bika. That’s a tough fight for DeGale because Bika has a lot of power and he’s going to make it awfully tough on him to try and win the fight.



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